This is a great little how-to on hiding and unhiding cells in Microsoft Excel: http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/excelformatting/qt/070814unhidecol.htm
How to Hide and Unhide Cells in Microsoft Excel
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Author Archives: nils
Geekworker has a new home
Please excuse the mess: We’ve moved!
I got tired of my (self-hosted) wordpress site for several reasons, the main ones being:
- Having my own hardware in a datacenter is way too expensive
- WordPress ran way too slowly and I felt like I do not have the time to properly optimise it
So, I’ve migrated the Geekworker blog to blogger.com. Blogger works surprisingly well and I really like the interface. There are some drawbacks too, such as not having a good font for code snippets.
The import – I had to use a third party site for conversion – seems to have worked, too, but expect some font weirdness and broken images until I can go through all posts and fix them. Thanks for your patience!
Update, August 5th: Broken images and the worst formatting problems should now be fixed. Don’t hesitate to report problems, please!
Sony Vegas and Sony Movie Studio: No Audio Tracks In mp4 video filefound
I use OBS Studio to record videos, and would ideally like to record multiple audio tracks (so that I might balance audio levels in post-production). Unfortunately, when I import these MP4 videos into Sony Movie Studio Platinum, it detects no audio tracks.
The problem is a buggy DLL file.
To fix this, go to your program’s install folder (mine resides in D:ApplicationsSonyMovie Studio Platinum 12.0) and find a subdirectory called “FileIO Plug-Inscompoundplug”. In this folder, you will find a file called “compoundplug.dll”. Simply rename this (to “compoundplug.backup”, for example) and your Sony Vegas or Sony Movie Studio should now import mp4 files correctly – even with multiple audio tracks.
Update, 2017-08-03: Never versions of Movie Studio likely do not have this problem. I have upgraded to Vegas Pro 14, and it reads files with multiple audio tracks just fine.
Livestreamer: Downloading Twitch Streams Results in 400 Client Error:Bad Request
I use Livestreamer to download my own VOD files when I dun goofed and break my local recordings. This used to work perfectly, but as I write this, the software is broken due to an update in the Twitch API that enforces authentication.
error: Unable to open URL:
https://api.twitch.tv/api/channels/havejoystick/access_token.json
(400 Client Error: Bad Request)
There is a workaround, however; you can hand over a client specific token. Right now, this is the one used by Twitch’s web player:
livestreamer --http-header Client-ID=jzkbprff40iqj646a697cyrvl0zt2m6
This works like a charm. For now.
OpenVPN: IP packet with unknown IP version seen
While setting up a new OpenVPN, I got this message:
Sep 23 21:05:25 ascalon openvpn[18770]: krynn/aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:xxxxx IP packet with unknown IP version=3 seen
The cause was that I had set my OpenVPN server to “dev tun”, while setting my Windows client to “dev tap” in the configuration. Changing the client to also be “dev tun” fixed the issue.
Easy-RSA Jabber SSL Certificate Problems
I’m currently setting up a new server and ran into something odd. Connecting to ejabberd with Pidgin, the later would reject the SSL certificate outright. At first I thought I had messed up the hostnames, or used an outdated Hash algorithm or whatever.
The errors I saw in the debug window were:
(22:17:42) nss: ERROR -8102: SEC_ERROR_INADEQUATE_KEY_USAGE
(22:17:42) nss: ERROR -8101: SEC_ERROR_INADEQUATE_CERT_TYPE
It turns out that SSL certificates can be flagged for what they can be used for, and I had simply created the certificate with the ./build-key command. Using ./build-key-server instead fixes the issue. The difference is that this will set nsCertType=server in the certificate.
I hope this helps anybody who runs into the same issue – it certainly had me pulling out my hair for a while.
How to Disable WordPress “Prove your Humanity” captcha code question
A while back, WordPress introduced an annoying little feature, where you have to solve a simple math question in order to log in to your site:
I ignored this for a while, but decided it was too much of a hassle wile offering no real benefit. However, finding a way to disable it is not very intuitive, as it is not actually a core WordPress feature, but rather one added with Jetpack. It’s part of the Protect module:
Disabling Protect disables the captcha.
If you don’t see it on the main Jetpack page, click on the “See all xx Jetpack features” button:
and search for it:
After disabling, you’ll no longer get asked any nagging math questions on login:
PLEASE NOTE: Disabling this feature may decrease security for your site. Use your best judgement!
How to get the previous month in OpenOffice
If you need to derive the previous month from a known date, use this formula:
=DATE(YEAR(A1);MONTH(A1)-1;1)
This works in OpenOffice (and LibreOffice), which do not seem to have a native function to do the job, and should work in MS Office Excel as well.
iOS iTunes Remote can’t find iTunes Library
The iTunes Remote software on my iPad worked flawlessly with my Macbook Air, but not with my Windows PC. I finally decided to investigate why, and after much search and trial-and-error, I found a solution.
It turns out that it gets confused by IPv6 on Windows (interestingly the same is not a problem on my MacBook, so I blame Windows). Once I disabled TCP/IPv6, iTunes remote started working.
To do so, open your Network and Sharing Center from the control panel. It looks like this:
Next, click on “Change adapter settings”, on the left-hand sidebar of that screen. You’ll get a new window, like this:
Now, most likely yours will be in English (Netzwerk = Network; LAN Verbindung = LAN Connection – Don’t ask me why my Windows insists on using some German terms) and the name of your network card will probably differ, but you want the LAN Connection that connects to the same network that your iPad or iPhone connects to. This might be a WLAN, and I suspect most people only have one network connected to their PC.
Anyway, right-click on the network card and select “Properties”. You’ll need Administrator rights. A new window pops up:
Simply uncheck the checkbox of the “Internet Protocol Version 6” item. Click OK.
One additional step is required.
Even though windows doesn’t ask you to, I found that I had to restart my PC. After that, my iTunes remote found my iTunes library flawlessly.
I hope this helps. And, no, I don’t know what we can do once TCP/IPv6 becomes indispensable – except for hoping for a fix from Apple and/or Microsoft.