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This is the update news for www.darkage.co.uk - but you can read the fastpush changelog here.
Well following the complete lethary and writer's block* on hosting a blog here, I've switched the blog section to an infrequently updated news section for the technical bits and bobs I run into. If there's something that catches my eye, or that I think may be useful, I'll put it in there.
* Realistically, you don't come here to read about the tedium in my life do
you. 
Thanks to Andrew Francis for helping me fix the command line password hack for WinVNC4. There's now a new beta version of Fastpush online.
Nick Williams sent me the latest versions of NoIcon VNC last month and they're now available from the download section. Thanks Nick!
I got a cheque from Google for the adverts that people have been clicking. Nothing like getting a little monetary reward for hosting adverts huh? :-) On a less flippant note, I've changed 7.2g beta over to Fastpush version 8. There's also a new beta out (8a) that supports UltraVNC 1.0. If you've not been and looked at this version of Ultra, I urge you to do so. It's very powerful stuff!
Later this month my ISP is changing the CGI server. So be fully prepared for the forum and the downloads section to pack in at any momemnt. :-) Hopefully I'll get the migration done before the big switch off.
Lots of changes this month. I've made some changes to Fastpush. I've added GoogleAds to the site (which helps pay off the hosting fees). Lastly, I've updated the documentation on how Fastpush works and there's now a document that goes through the installation process step by step.
Replaced the old Perl based forum with a SQL based system. This should be a bit more relisient and with time I hope it grows to be a valueable source of help.
Repackaged Fastpush 7.1 into it's own zip file.
Added Nick Williams' amended VNC programs to the downloads section. Nick has changed RealVNC 3.37 and RealVNC4 so that the tray icon does not appear.
Wow, there's a bit of gap between updates eh? Well, if the script works - don't
mess with it I guess. 
Seeing as RealVNC 4 is out of beta, I thought it would be best to tweak Fastpush to support it properly. The next thing on the list will be to put in extra options to support UltraVNC as I hear that's not far away from a standard release. Fingers crossed!
I get a fair bit of email from people saying thanks which is very nice. If you really want to show your appreciation, here's a link to my amazon wish list. Sure, it's a bit cheeky asking for stuff, but hey who's writing the script? :-)
I've also put back the documents on how to make your own setup.exe file for Windows 9x. It seems a number of you out there are still using that version of Windows and who am I to deny you guys? :-)
I seem to be doing more and more with Windows vbscript these days, so I guess it might be useful if I uploaded the scripts I've amassed and developed. More on that later....
Just uploaded version 7 of fastpush. This release uses the REG command from XP rather than the much older NT4 reskit that you can download. It also handles VNC4 installs so you can blast that around your network.
Watch this space for 7.1 the bugfix release.
Those of you who've checked the site recently will have seen the beta release
of fastpush 6.6. You can read what's new and broken improved on the update
page. Fingers crossed it'll be more good than bad. :-)
Nick Williams and Robin Balmforth have tweaked RealVNC 3.3.7 so that the system tray icon doesn't change when you connect to it. This is both a good and a bad thing. It could be abused if you wanted to spy one someone, but at the same time situations arise when you need to keep an eye on certain terminals (school Internet PCs) without tipping off the user. Nick's sent me both the source and a compiled version.
On a non-VNC matter I've been particularly impressed by Media Player Classic. It's a nifty little player that does what it says on the tin: it's a media player and nothing more. No subscriptions, DRM or useless channels. There's also a plug-in (called Real Alternative) so you can play RealMedia streams without requiring Real player. Cool!
No big updates to the site. I've killed the guestbook as I'm getting more pr0n spam than actual comments. Most people use the mailing form anyway. You must be a shy bunch. :-)
Nice to see the UltraVNC project steaming towards a release candidate. There's also a Novell edition now over at Novell Forge.
I don't usually put personal information on this site, but I'm just so damn chuffed about this. My wife gave birth to our son on Monday night. He's sooooo cute - but I could be biased.
More news when he starts sleeping..... then I can.
Thanks also to Diego Rodriguez for mailing in bugfix for Spanish users.
Coo - been a bit quite in here hasn't it?
Firstly and most importantly - my wife and I are expecting the delivery of our son (at least we think it's a boy). He was due last week so place your bets now! :-) In other news, the local exchange has been ADSL enabled and my order has gone in.
So sprog in one arm - mouse in the other!
Nothing to do with VNC but ADSLguide is a good place to read up on....errr... ADSL related news. There's industry gossip, hardware reviews and details if you can get BT broadband in your area.
Is it me or is this just a little scary if you're a sysadmin. This little gem came from Infosecurity Europe 2003 via The Register (a corker of an IT news site).
Of the 152 office workers surveyed many explained the origin of their passwords.
The most common password was "password" (12 per cent) and the most popular category was their own name (16 per cent) followed by their football team (11 per cent) and date of birth (8 per cent).
Two thirds of workers have given their password to a colleague (the same as last year) and three quarters knew their co-workers passwords.
In addition to using their password to gain access to their company information two thirds of workers use the same password for everything, including their personal banking, Web site access, etc.
So 12% of people's home banking accounts use password? I wonder how many credit card PINs are 1234? :-)
Holy wideband Batman! :-D My local telephone exchange is only 5 votes away from getting a BT ADSL upgrade! Woo-hoo!!
I've had a number of emails from people saying they're getting WinVNC user settings dialogs appearing when the log on - however, they're not running VNC at all.
There is a (fairly new) Internet worm out called DeLoder. This spreads via open Windows ports and infects your computer with (amongst other things) a tweaked version of WinVNC. You can read all about it at Sophos' or CNET's web sites.
So far just a few extra links to new VNC projects. Seems that Laplink have got on board with the whole GPL thing and released a SSL secured version of VNC. I wonder where this'll lead?
Bashing away at a few minor glitches in FP 6.0 before I alter the change logs.
I've just updated the building your own setup howto. Ben Blackmore wrote in saying that my own ISS still works, although the builder programs have changed quite a bit.
This next bit willl only apply to 2000/XP users. There are a couple of shareware tools that make use of the RunAs feature of 2000/XP. They encode a username, password and path to an executable. If you wanted to use you own setup.exe's (instead of FP) - it's another option open to you.
Been talking to a few people and after a conversation about Xcmd / PsExec - I might try my hand at making a small script to remotely install VNC (smaller than FP anyway). It would (hopefully) be a much smaller download than Fastpush.
Another month rolls on by eh?
Fastpush reaches a small milestone of version 6 this time around. Version 6?!? I never thought it would go that far. Perhaps if I could write better batch files I'd have less bugs to fix. Ho hum :-)
A note of thanks to : -
Michael Schwarz for sending in a collection of new links. I strongly suggest you strike out to the SysWorkSoft site for the password manager.
Patric Herz for bringing to my attention the problems with shortcut creation under a German Windows install. I'm still working on that one Patric!! :-)
Thanks to the team who wrote the ShortCut util - I've now included that in the zipped download.
A flurry of updates just before the new year ends. Merry xmas to those of you who wrote in!
On a bah-humbug note, the broadband status in our area is set to be pretty
poor for the foreseeable future. The guy who wrote in was merely touting
for trade offering help to those in the existing network get connected and
there are no plans to extend the NTL network. Arrrgh! :-(
I'm back from a very nice holiday in the US. I don't think I'll be called up for the boogie board world championships just yet. :-)
What's new on the VNC front? Two people have pooled their resources and there's now UltraVNC available. It's got NTLM authentication (as well as keeping VNC authentication), file transfer and a host of other enhancements all pulled into one neat package.
Darren Vernon has kindly written a nicer I don't have a clue what machine I'm using program. You can get MyDetails here. Nice! </jazz club>
Managed to put out version 5.6 before I go away for crimes against fashion
and humanity a nice long holiday. Hopefully the housesitters won't be attacked
by the cats this time.
Also this month, I got an article published in my local magazine on the state of broadband in our (rural) area. Seems someone from one of the telcos has read it and I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be good news. (hey - I can dream can't I? <w>).
Still working on merging everyone's suggestions and code improvements. I
will get in done eventually!
A new release a new bug to fix!
Jason Lamb reports that using Fastpush from the program files folder can cause the path detection routine to fail. I'll look into that later but his fix is here now.
I had to change line 334 in vnc.cmd from:
ORIG: for /f "tokens=3,*" %%i in ('dir .^|find /i "directory"') do @set currentpath=%
NEW: for /f "tokens=2,*" %%i in ('dir .^|find /i "directory"') do @set currentpath=%%j
He says that fixes his problem, although I should note that this only affects fastpush if you launch it from a folder with a space in it.
Finally managed to get an all-in-one zip of fastpush online. Also, adding a link off the main page to MailWasher - an anti-spam tool. Check it out, it might be useful to you.
A fair bit of bug testing - the WSF shortcut was giving me trouble under XP.
There's no single zip file for fastpush at the mo - I'm having trouble with my dialup connection. Just don't mention broadband alright? :-)
Thought I better get my finger out and upload the latest version of Fastpush. Bit of a jump this time - moving on from 5.0 to 5.3.
Oh, I was 30 yesterday.
Back from my holidays in a very hot Egypt.
Not done anything with Fastpush recently - although I've looking at changing the way the routine handles the command line options. Not sure if the new version is any better.
Allen Wilkes sent me a link to VncQuickDesk - I've not had time to download it yet, but the homepage looks very interesting.
There's been talk on the mailing list about making WinVNC more modular. Nothing concrete on that yet, but that would really improve development.
No news on the fastpush front, but some links to some excellent VNC projects.
Firstly, esVNC which includes the Tight encodings, file transfer (woo!) and some new image manipulation to improve performance.
There's another NTLM authentication on the block! You can find all the info here.
Dave Dyer's zVNC page has settled to a new place too.
Thanks to Leila and Haim for those new links. I will at sometime put these up with the others.... when I come back off my 2 week holiday. Woo-hoo! :-)
Constantin, the TightVNC programming wiz, has been busy so there's a new release of his VNC flavour. I'll be downloading this and adding it to the next release of Fastpush.
What's new with Fastpush? Well, I've got the script to create Start Menu shortcuts - just like the local installers do, although I've a spot of bother with the Net.exe shortcut with Terminal Server.
Watch this space...... :-)
Looks like the VNC homepage is on the move as the AT&T Cambridge labs are on their way out. I've altered the links on the main pages. Oh, and Dave Dyer has returned with a new home for his zVNC project.
ACPI has knackered my soundcard too. Bah humbug!
Updated a missing link in the How To section (to point to the Windows 9x stuff). Also, a little more news on Linux routers (not very interesting).
Did a bit of work on Fastpush this last week or so. Fixed a problem with the servicehelper not being installed - I had all the right data, I just forget to tell reg.exe where to load it from. ;-) Also, tweaked the boiler plate to give out some more info.
My next task is to use the shortcut.exe reskit tool to create shortcuts in the Start Menu. That'll be fun.... NOT.
Some news on linux routers. Something I've been experimenting with for some friends at work.
Happy birthday to Dawn (my lovely wife!)!
Added a link to the Video Driver Accelerated VNC project.
Also adding a missing icon to the legacy 9x rollout package (Thanks Alex!). Seems the package was missing a shortcut to "defaulsettings" which is kinda useful! :-)
Updated the FAQ to include links to the VNC manual pages. Please note I'm not intending to reinvent the wheel and produce my own <w>. The VNC ones are complete, although Tridia and TightVNC have their own options too.
Updated fastpush to include the new release of TightVNC 1.2.3.
Added more notes of rolling out VNC to Windows 9x machines. This short doc shows how to roll out a prebuilt setup package from the login script.
Argh, I blew my guestbook script up and I've had to add a new one. Oh well!
BTW, it's Mothering Sunday in the UK. Did you remember a card? :-)
I've moved all the Dark Age RPG stuff away to it's own section as I'm not pulling
a lot of traffic on that. Seems most people are coming for the VNC notes......
I've dropped the idea of a DHTML menu as the ones I've tried aren't cross browser
and I like the idea of standards (I use IE & Opera).
The screen size should be okay on 800x600 systems, but the site (hopefully) looks a bit better on 1024*768.
As for printing the documents out, I'll be added a "printer friendly" version of each document shortly.
Still working on updating the site and hopefully this will make things easier to update and to use.
Why the update? Well, the site was beginning to look a bit of a mess and I needed to go through the documents and fix some of the obsolete text.
Putting my feet up after a very nice week off!