Firefox bookmark for doing dns lookups


I do a lot of DNS lookups using dnsstuff.com and finally got around to doing a bookmark for it to make it easier to use. The bookmark makes it possible for me simply to write “dns <hostname> <record-type>” in the address bar of Firefox to do the lookup instead of having to go to the site, locate the field, input the domain name and click the submit button. The bookmark automatically does a lookup for an A-record if no record-type is specified as the second parameter:

Lookup A-record for www.example.com dns www.example.com
Lookup A-record for www.example.com dns www.example.com A
Lookup MX-record for example.com dns example.com MX

To add the bookmark to Firefox right-click the following link and add select “Bookmark This Link…”. Once that is done you need to edit the bookmark (right-click it in the bookmark bar and select “Properties”) and add a Keyword (I use “dns”).

Apache mod_rewrite on Query_String

Note to self: use a RewriteCond against %{QUERY_STRING} to match Query_String arguments in RewriteRule’s. To send requests for http://www.example.com/stuff.jsp?id=2 to another host:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond   %{QUERY_STRING} id=2
RewriteRule   ^/stuff.jsp     http://www.acme.com [R,L]

StelsCSV v3.0 – a Fast JDBC Driver for CSV/Text Files

Unfortunately it isn’t open source and/or free but I can certainly see the uses for a JDBC driver that acts on plain text files. I cannot count the number of times I have written routines for parsing text files during migration projects. Could this be the answer. Imagine being able to simply JOIN data from different text files! Nice!! Licenses start at 109 USD.

StelsCSV v3.0 – a Fast JDBC Driver for CSV/Text Files @ JAVA DEVELOPER’S JOURNAL

Show ‘n Tell Thursday: Removing the slash screen from Sametime 7.5 (5 October 2006)


Since Sametime 7.5 is built upon the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) you can hack it as such. In Eclipse RCP programs the slash screen is a configurable component which led me to believe it could be removed. And I was right. The below guidelines are for Windows but should be applicable to other platforms as well.

To not display the slash screen at startup do as follows:

  • Open your Windows Explorer and navigate to your Sametime 7.5 installation directory (C:Program FilesIBMSametime 7.5)
  • Open the “configuration” directory
  • Open the config.ini file in your favorite editor
  • Remove the second line of the file (the one starting with “osgi.splashPath”) or comment it out by inserting a #-character at the start of the line
  • Save and close the file

When restarting Sametime the slash screen should be gone.

Happy days! Please note that this approach probably isn’t supported but hey – shouldn’t it be a configurable option in the first place? 😉