dd and netcat on one end, netcat and dd on the other. so simple, it’s like magic.

The amount of overlap depends on the engine, but most modern fuel injected high performance internal combusion engines have some valve overlap. While the intake valve is starting to open, the exhaust valve is starting to close. During this time there can be a back flow of air/exhaust in the direction of the fuel injector and intake manifold. This effect is stronger under high vacuum conditions (low absolute pressure). It is important to wait for this back flow to reverse before firing the injector. Once the exhaust valve is open, the velocity and flow of air will have increased as the exhaust gases have completely turned around and begun to escape through the exhaust port and out of the exhaust manifold. The optimal time to fire the injector is during this period, but as engine speed increases the injection must begin earlier to fully complete to avoid flowing fuel straight through the combustion chamber and right out of the exhaust port.

I needed a batch converter to turn non-xml style Excel spreadsheets (all the older versions) into delimited text files. If you run it without supplying a sheet name, it will list all the sheets available. You can also optionally define a delimiter to use instead of the default comma. So here’s my code along with part of the xlrd module which I tweaked a little.

If you have proxy settings set up in Internet Explorer already, then you can just run proxycfg -u and you’re done. It will add the registry keys for you. In the run dialog (Start -> Run) enter this command. It will flash the command prompt black screen and exit …

Windows & Apps shortcuts

Ctrl + Shift + Esc - Open task manager
Windows Key + R - run dialog
Winkey + D - toggle show desktop
Winkey + E - windows explorer
Winkey + L - lock workstation
Middle click a link - open in new background tab (useful for google, reddit)
Middle click a tab …

If you’re behind a proxy and you run that, you’ll get something like “the other end hung up” or “Cannot get remote repository information” because git is trying to connect using port 9418 by default. I found a few sites saying all you need to do is change git to http in the url and it will work, but that did not work for me. But it’s an easy fix. Change git’s http.proxy and you’re done. Here’s how: (replace my proxy host and port 8002 with your own)

You can do this globally for everyone, or just for yourself. There’s a hidden directory called “.subversion” in your home directory. Edit the servers file. Everything should be self explanatory. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find a global section. The proxy settings in there should cover it…

First I had to run dos2unix on all the files to get the right new line chars. Then I had to find a patch to fix the kernel-rt problem with the linux-vdso.so.1 missing messages. I found I could run MakeSpec.py and Build.py to compile python scripts into executables after patching. Here’s what the patch does.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# For each tab (worksheet) in a file (workbook),
# spit out columns separated by “,”,
# and rows separated by c/r.
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;
use strict;
my $filename = shift || “Book1.xls”;
my $e = new Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;
my $eBook = $e->Parse($filename);
my $sheets = $eBook->{SheetCount};
my ($eSheet, $sheetName);
foreach my $sheet (0 .. $sheets - 1) {
…

Smarter tabs, Opera turbo, widgets, cache control, dragonfly, speed dial, and all the little things like middle mouse clicks to open tabs.