irregular spline

First off, I'd like to send a big shout out to Sandro Pereira who's been managing the vision stencils pack. Essentially, I'm re-posting his information here, because I had a really hard time finding the latest Visio pack for Azure, that wasn't a bunch of SVG's. My thought is that if more people re-post, maybe the search engines of the internet will have an easier time propagating the information... Sandero's Blog (the original post around the new stencils): https://blog.sandro-pereira.com/2019/10/18/microsoft-integration-and-azure-stencils-pack-for-visio-new-major-version-available-v5-0-0/ Sandero's GitHub: https://github.com/sandroasp/Microsoft-Integration-and-Azure-Stencils-Pack-for-Visio Microsoft TechNet Download: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Collection-of-Integration-e6a3f4d0 I will say, and maybe it's just because I'm using Visio 2013, each icon has a boarder that needs to be removed when putting it on the page... Likely it...

Previously we looked at creating keys, importing public and private keys and the overall setup of gnupg with python. This time around, we're going to take a look at file encryption. Overall the file encryption process is fairly general/easy. But it lacks in the area of scaleablilty, ie to start, you'll only be encrypting one file at a time, which can be done outside of Python with ease. The idea of going over everything in Python, is that you can setup a script to encrypt multiple files in a folder (look for that in Part 3). Assumptions; you have python, and python-gnupg installed, and a public key from someone you want to encrypt and send files to imported to your keystore home (see Part 1 for more information here. Let's get started with Python file encryption. Start off by getting into your python shell, and enter the following: >>> import os >>> import gnupg >>> gpg_home = "/path/to/keyfile/.gnupg" >>> gpg = gnupg....

Windows 10, so far, not that bad. I'll do some reviews of it in the very near future. But since my previous post on configuring privacy settings during the setup of Windows 10 (found HERE ), I've had a few people ask me, "Well, what if I used the Express Settings when I installed Windows 10?" My response, that's an easy fix. I'll quickly run through the changes that you'll need to make if you don't want to share things like you internet to spread updates, or WiFi passwords to you contacts, etc. So, here we go... Privacy Settings Most everything can be changed in the new Settings app, under the Privacy section. Let's take a look at whats there: General Settings Under the General section, you have the option to change things like letting apps use you ID for a 'universal experience' and providing information for targeted advertising. You also have the Smart Screen Filter there in between the two. As you can see from my screen shot, I h...

I want to talk a little about MD5's, because every once in a while when downloading a file you might see something like: MD5: DrunkenTwoYearOldTypingOnAKeyboard So, let's do some explaining. MD5 is a fingerprint or "message digest" (the actual meaning of MD), AKA checksum, of a file. The MD5 algorithm is intended to provide a digital signature for large files that are compressed, and before they are encrypted with a private (or secret) key. The idea is that if a file has been tampered with, or the download was unsuccessful, you will receive a different MD5 checksum than the original or the one provided is. In short, MD5 is used to verify data's integrity. You can check out the MD5 Wiki HERE if you want more information. Now, in this post we will look at verifying a MD5 checksum. This could be one that a friend provided you for a file or message, or could be one that was provided with a download (more common). Especially if you are like me and have a tendency...

So... Windows 10 really likes to share your data with Microsoft and others. Most of the below settings are adapted from an Ars Tech article (found HERE ) plus my own personal experience with the setup of Windows 10. Just note that with increased privacy and/or security settings comes a decrease in features (such as disabling Cortana). You don't have to do all of these, but some of them I'd highly recommend. On the instillation screen you'll see a large button that says "Use Express Settings". Instead look for the small "Customize Settings" button and select that. The first customization page has settings for personalization, targeted advertising and location tracking. Go ahead and disable everything on this page. The second page has some useful options. Turn off the following options: Predictive Web Browsing; Connecting to open Wi-Fi hot spots; and Wi-Fi Sense Finish the install as directed. The rest of the changes will need to b...

Like most things Microsoft, there's more than one way to accomplish a task. Now me personally, I do not like the set up of the control panel. Every time I have to try and find something on a new computer, the first thing I have to do is change the view category to icons. But I tell you there is an easier way to get things done (actually two ways...). By knowing the Control Panel Tool commands you can quickly get to some of the items either from the Run dialog box or from the Windows Start Menu search bar. By using the Run dialog box (Windows Key + r) you can access the "control" commands to quickly get to various settings or control panel items. For a full list of the control commands see Microsoft's table of simplified control syntax. What I've found to be an even faster method, is to access some of these control panel settings by knowing their .cpl extension. Some of these include access to the Network Connections, or Add/Remove Programs, or System Propertie...

So, as of recent I have had several occurrences of this wonderful RDP error as of late, so I figured I'd share what I've found to be helpful. It pops up upon connection and goes like this: "Remote session was disconnected because there are no Remote Desktop client access licenses available for this computer. Please contact the server administrator." And it looks something like this: Oddly enough this type of error has noting to do with licensing, it's typically the cause of a bad Registry Key. But before we go Registry diving, I suggest attempting to rebuild the default RDP profile. This may work in some cases, but more than likely, you will be following the later steps. To remove the "Default.rdp" file: Open File Explorer Navigate to Documents Locate "Default.rdp" and Delete it Attempt to launch an RDP session. If that fixes your error than you'r done. If not, follow these next steps to remove the Registry Key that's ...

I often like to play around with new and different Linux distros as I am building my experience in computer and phone forensics. Mostly to see what they are like and how they could be of any use to me either now or in the future. One thing that I have found is that in doing so I have to utilize different forms of creating the bootable media, typically a USB Flash Drive. In doing so I often find that depending on how the media was created, doing a simple Windows format of the drive isn't enough to properly clean it for use with something else. Typically hidden files/folders can be left on the device, and sometimes the bootable flash drive creation process can partition the flash drive and the Windows GUI only sees one of the two partitions. Windows does have a command based tool that enables better management of drives called DiskPart (Check out their TechNet Article Here for more details). I'm going to go through a quick walk through on how to clean and format a flash drive us...

I get this question quite often from some of the remote users that utilize their VMs via RDP. Especially since the environment in which they work in requires a password change every 90 days....I've told them multiple times how to do this, but as it is not widely documented, I suppose I could make a note here just to aid those that stumble upon this through Googling the question: "How to CTL-ALT-DEL in an RDP session?" Well simply put the answer is: CTL-ALT-END I know, it doesn't make much sense, but it works. That's all you need to know.