If you're just here for the how to, skip down to the pictures after the break.

Now I know that bypassing passwords is something that not everyone likes to do. However sometimes you can forget the password for a critical file or someone has sent you a file and forgotten to tell you the password to edit it.

Microsoft office's new (can I still call it that) xml based document formats have capacity for accidental write protection. Some of these include password protection. While this is great, particularly if sending spreadsheets to a customer; it isn't so great when HR send a file that needs to be edited and even they can't remember the password. That was the problem and thanks to Horatio and this Superuser answer. I was able to save the day and remove the password protection.
This may or may not work for everything but I hope it helps you out. It goes without saying that any damage or liability is taken by you if you choose to follow these instructions.

1. Firstly I will create a password protected .docx file:
   
   

   In the review tab of Microsoft Word select protect document.Work through the options for the settings you desire. Then save, this will give you a password protected Word Document.

2. Now we need to get access to the .xml files that make up the .docx
   
   
   

   The easiest way to do this is to just rename the file and change the file extension to .zip

3. Next we need to open the settings xml
   
   

   To do this we extract the .zip file and open the folder called "word" in the root of the zip.

4. We are getting close now, this is the interesting part. We open the file called settings.xml
   
   

   This is the part we are interested in. I have only opened it in Internet Explorer because it is the default viewer. From here on the file must be edited. The default editor is notepad which is plenty sufficient for this.

5. This is more or less what the interesting part should look like to start with.
   
   

   We need to change this part of it: enforcement="1" To: enforcement="0"

6. Once this is done we can save and close everything back up.
   
   
   
7. Then we re-zip the files
   
   

   Rename the .zip back to a .docx

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Written by Rex ORegan-2

Published: 18 June 2015

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So I have finished installing the radials on the vertical antenna. In the end I decided I'd read the instructions and see how they say to earth it and this is what the instructions gave me:


This is my completed attachment to the bolts that hold on the insulator at the base of the bracket. Check it out after the break to see how I got to this point.

I'm glad to see you're interested. So to start with I was still trying to solder the copper wire onto the aluminium bracket. One though I had was that it might not be sticking to the aluminium much because of the oxide layer that it gets. So I got my grinder out and cleaned it up a bit. I did just use the normal grinding disk that was already in the tool. I know these can get gummed up by aluminium but I was only skimming a little off so it wasn't a problem, thankfully. So here is a picture of what it looked like after cleaning it up a little:


 However that wasn't working for me with electric irons so I figured I'd get some more heat onto the job. Enter a propane torch borrowed from Dad. With that going this is what things looked like:

Now that didn't work either for some reason. At the time I figured that if I could get the solder to sit on the piece then it might flow. So I unbolted everything and put the base on top of the stump to get it fairly level. Unfortunately my phone seems to have deleted all of the photos from that stage so I can't show you how it went. Needless to say it didn't work. Thinking about it, the aluminium probably wasn't hot enough, but the solder was too hot meaning that it would ball up and run off the aluminium rather than running over the surface.

So at that point I decided to take a break, unfortunately without a kit-kat, and read the instructions that I had been given. Now the first page of these has a large area where the ink got lifted off or something at one point but it was still readable on the sides. So reading what little I could I discovered the "Fig.5" showed how to connect an earth. Upon looking at "Fig.5" It seemed to indicate that the bolts at the base were for earthing and sure enough when I looked there was a bit of wire wrapped around one of then and a fair bit of galvanic corrosion and a lot of white slightly powdery aluminium. So I cleaned that up with the grinder again and crimped on some connectors, added some brass washers, then put everything back together again.

I do apologize for the lack of pictures in this post, but sometimes there's nothing we can do with the technology we have.

Cheers,
Rex

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Written by Rex ORegan-2

Published: 14 June 2015

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Hi, Just a quick post, mostly to remind me when I go to do this again.

I was having trouble printing to our Epson NX430 TX435 from my laptop (Running Debian Linux) over the wireless connection. The solution? Download the latest drivers from Epson of course. This is the link I used. If you open that link and do a search for the model of printer it will give a list of downloads for Linux operating systems.

The "latest" tag wasn't correct, but going from versions and dates it was fairly easy to establish which download was for the latest version. I installed this with no problems and the jobs that had queued up started to print immediately.

I hope this helps you, but it will probably help me when I forget.

Cheers,
Rex

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Written by Rex ORegan-2

Published: 12 June 2015

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So one of the other projects I did some work on over the weekend was the Mill. I now can move all 3 axes and using the mkwrapper tool I can control it from my tablet, laptop or phone without having to put a screen onto the Beaglebone that is running the mill. Something I think I will have to add though is a button as part of the GUI that allows the Beaglebone to shut down cleanly without having to ssh into it. That shouldn't be too hard and will probably be one of the things I will work on along with the rest of the GUI now that it will move.

Below are some pictures of what I did. Not very exciting though mostly just soldering and tracing wires. I even managed to get 2 out of 3 motors spinning in the right direction.

This is with the Z Axis and the X Axis wired up, Z on the right, X on the Left.

Now all 3 have been done. The 3 unconnected wires will be used for e-stop and some limit switches I think, possibly for spindle speed manual override. I have another Cable that I will use for the other needed signals.

In the back right you can see the connections I have made so far. I will put a proper enclosure over the connection before I call this project finished.

This is a closeup of the final connection. The knot is for strain relief in the main cable.

 Thinking back now even before I have finished there are some things I would do differently. If I were to start again I would probably not cheap out and use more plugs, one between each motor and an enclosure proably on the back wall, then the big grey cable would have a plug on both ends rather than being soldered to the mill at one end.

Anyway, full speed ahead and onward ho. If I get to the end and decide it isn't working then I'll change it.

I have another 1 or 2 projects that I got up to over the weekend coming up so keep a wearther eye out.

Cheers,
Rex

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Written by Rex ORegan-2

Published: 10 June 2015

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