View unreachable web pages

There can be several reasons why a webpage is not available. Apart from the obvious server outage, there could be a geo block or a recent deletion of the page.

As long as you are able to get the address of the webpage there is a good chance to retrieve it.

One possibility is to use https://cachedview.com/ which allows to view cached pages from Google web. It is usually updated every few days by google so as long as an article is a couple of days old, you have a good chance accessing it there.

Another option is https://web.archive.org/ which archives copies of webpages including old versions. So if you want to know what was on a certain webpage years ago, archive.org is a good start.

Recover webpages from your browser cache

Think of the following situation: The database of your Wiki just crashed, you have a backup from a couple of days ago, but what about the pages that have been edited since then?

There is hope, most likely your browser has cached some of the files when you viewed them the last time.

Very important!
Don’t try to access the page because this will overwrite the cached contents.

To recover the cached pages follow these steps:

Firefox:

  1. Go into offline mode by clicking the hamburger icon, developer tools and work offline
  2. Open the page about:cache
  3. Click on “List Cache Entries”
  4. Search for the page you want to recover
  5. Click on the link, this leads you to a page with the hexdump of the compressed file entitled “Cache entry information”
  6. Click on the link to the page here, the page opens with the cached contents, including images
  7. Save your page

Repeat this from step 2 for every page you are interested in. Go back to online mode (hamburger icon, developer tools and uncheck work offline) when done.

Chrome:

  1. Open chrome://cache
  2. Search for the page you want to recover
  3. Click on the link, this leads you to a page with the hexdump of the compressed file
  4. Select all on this page (Ctrl + A) and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl + C)
  5. Go to this page http://www.sensefulsolutions.com/2012/01/viewing-chrome-cache-easy-way.html
  6. Paste the contents into the textbox on the page
  7. Click “Go”
  8. Click on the link under “Results” to download the cached file. Some browsers block the download of html files because of security concerns, in this case go to downloads and explicitely allow the download of this file

Repeat this for every page you are interested in.

You are welcome.

Combining multiple RSS feeds

The easiest way to combine multiple RSS feeds into one is using RSS Mix. All one has to do is enter the URL addresses of the feeds (There’s no limit to the maximum number of feeds to be combined) to be combined and then pressing the “Create!” button. RSS mix then provides you an URL to the aggregated feed.

Connection from Mac OSX Mavericks to Windows

Solution provided by Prof.Bettstetter:

After installing OS X Mavericks on a Mac, you can no longer connect from this Mac to a Windows share.

Solution:

On the MAC: System preference (Systemeinstellungen) -> Sharing (Freigabe) -> File Sharing (Dateifreigabe) in the left side vertical bar -> Options (Optionen). Read the note about „Windows-Dateifreigabe“ and chose the user of your choice.

You may also test to uncheck the Share files and folders using SMB and check the Share files and folders using AFP checked.

See https://discussions.apple.com/message/23470245#23470245

OS X Mavericks

Apple released yesterday the newest build of Mac OSX called Mavericks ( http://www.apple.com/osx/ ).
The Update is for free. If you use Matlab you may get Problems with the X11. The solution is rather simple:

just install the package from http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

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Software news

The following software products are now available:

  • Matlab 2013a TeWi License – find it at \\filesrv\software\matlab
  • Maple 16 – find it at \\filesrv\software\maple

 

Code Mocking

Did you just start on your job and had to take over an implementation from a previous colleague? Welcome to Code Mocking!

“Code Mocking is an engineering tradition, which happens whenever a software project is handed to a new engineer”

Of course, the old code is always written very badly compared to your standards 😉

From Dilbert by Scott Adams:
http://www.dilbert.com/2013-02-24/