Slow Excel 2007 with graphs of large data points


I'm sure anyone using Excel 2007 has run into this show stopping problem. You have a huge dataset, say something like 10k results or more (benchmarking data in my case). You format the data, and then put it into a graph. At this point Excel 2007 becomes slow. Sometimes it'll just crash. Either way it becomes unworkable with large data sets that posed no problem for Excel 2003. In an effort to solve the problem, I ended up having a hackish fix. I'd just do one operation on the graph, save the results, close, open the workbook up and repeat. Obviously this took time.

I was pointed to a fix by kellanved. Apparently Microsoft are aware of this issue and have made a hotfix for it. Since the hotfix hasn't been through the vigorous testing that they do *cough**cough*, you have to request the hotfix from MS.
Excel 2007 hotfix package: June 13, 2007 details the hotfix and when to request for it.

After installing the hotfix (which took MS a nice quick hour and a half to return my request), Excel flies. The large data sets have become manageable, no more hackish fixing to the problem.

So if you've got the same issue, give the hotfix a try.

NeoThermic
Posted by NeoThermic on 10th April 2008 2:40pm »» 0 Comments »» Trackback this post »» Permalink

The Print Space


Last year I attended the Nikon Expo in London. While I was there, I came across a company called The Print Space.
I was offered the chance to have a 40x30 inch C-Type print done for free (worth £40). A free print? Why not! Their offices were located in London, so I planned to do the print when I was next travelling through London.

The first problem I had was choosing an image that I'd like to get printed. I had many an image in my collection taken by me, but I'd never really sat down and said "would this look good when printed at 40x30?". I sifted through my images, and finally settled on an image I shot on my D50:
Image

I get down to the print space. It's a nice place, very open, very calm. There's a distinct change of feeling as you walk into the place from the London streets. The walls have various images from various artists on them, but not in a coarse way. Since it was my first visit, I was taken down to the retouching booth where my image was modified to be ready for print.

Since I had never printed my images at a professional print place or indeed never actually used colour profiles or large image sizes, I didn't know the workflow needed. For those that need to know, this is the basic workflow:


You can do this on the Mac's that the print space has, or you can do it locally if you've got a calibrated setup and just bring it in for print right away.

Their prices are decent (and listed on their website). More interestingly, you're only limited to the size of a paper roll. For C-Type prints, that is a massive 30 by 1,968.5 inches. Imagine the panoramic you could print on that! :)

In short, if you want decent prints, these people are it. They have a customer for sure here!

NeoThermic
Posted by NeoThermic on 26th January 2008 4:58pm »» 1 Comments »» Trackback this post »» Permalink

Backtrack 3 and Intel's 3945ABG wireless card


Having seen so many people in #remote-exploit trying their best to get Backtrack 3 working with Intel's wireless chipsets, mainly the 3945ABG, I decided to write a quick-howto. Lets start by saying it's not quite easy. The default driver for Intel 3945 chipsets can do normal wireless stuff, but can't inject. The injection driver can't do normal wireless stuff. So you have to pick your tasks, and thus which driver to use, carefully.

In this brief guide I'll show you the quick way of getting over to the injection driver, finding a network in kismet and throwing wesside-ng at it to obtain the key. Then I'll show how to swap back over and connect to the network you've just pen-tested.

So, how do you know this guide is for you? A nice quick way is to do
Code: Select all
lspci | grep 3945ABG


You'll get something like:
Code: Select all
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)


If so, move on, you're doing well.


The first thing to note is that the default driver for this card is called `iwl3945`. Using an `iwconfig` will get you something like:
Image

airmon-ng tells us:
Code: Select all
Interface   Chipset      Driver

wlan0         iwl3945 - [phy0]


If you were to try tell airmon-ng to enable monitor mode on wlan0, you'd get an error like:
Code: Select all
/usr/local/sbin/airmon-ng: line 338: /sys/class/ieee80211/phy0/add_iface: Permission denied
mon0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device


So you need to do the following:
Code: Select all
# modprobe -r iwl3945
# modprobe ipwraw


Then do an iwconfig, and you'll see this...
Image

This wifi0 device can go into monitor mode:
Image

Now to find your network to pen-test (and of course, only do this on hardware you own. In this case we're going to use the BT Home Hub we have here).

First edit /usr/local/etc/kismet.conf in you fave editor. We're only going to change a single line, so no need to load anything fancy (I myself use nano, but use what you'd like)

Scroll down to the "source=" line. You'll want to alter the source line to read something like:
Code: Select all
source=iwl3945,wifi0,Intel


Save your changes, and start kismet. Find the network you're looking for (pressing 's' and then 'f' for first-seen sort order), then press 'i' to get the following info:

Image

Note down the MAC address of the router, exit kismet.

Now the fun part. wesside-ng takes the tedious work out of getting all the IV packets and running aircrack-ng on them to get the key. To use wesside-ng:
Code: Select all
wesside-ng -i wifi0 -v {BSSID}


In our case, we'll put in the BSSID of the target network, 00:14:7F:A1:97:39.

Here's wesside-ng after successful authentication:
Image

Here we're cracking the key:
Image


Tada, it found the test key, E723F7D5E8 (Yes, it's a 64-bit key for speed and testing).
Image

Now we need to prove this is correct. Reverse the drivers:
Code: Select all
# modprobe -r ipwraw
# modprobe iwl3945


Fire up your chosen network finder (The wireless assistant will suffice here), find the network in question and click "connect". Enter in the key we just found.

There we go, success:
Image

I hope this helps those who are stuck getting the Intel card to inject.

NeoThermic
Posted by NeoThermic on 31st December 2007 6:42pm »» 2 Comments »» Trackback this post »» Permalink

Aha! New forums!


As said in the post below, I'm in the process of updating the forums. I've just got the news page working again, now I've got to work my way through and fix all the files that are relying on phpBB2 stuff... ;)

NeoThermic
Posted by NeoThermic on 5th November 2007 7:48pm »» 4 Comments »» Trackback this post »» Permalink

Unloved


Ok, so here's the deal. The site does have a brand-spanking-new design done for it. I just need to find time to not only alter my site to have it, but also get around to porting my modified forums to phpBB3 and also do the new skin...

Boy, I'm going to be so busy...

NeoThermic
Posted by NeoThermic on 24th June 2007 2:46am »» 0 Comments »» Trackback this post »» Permalink

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