Mount/Read VMWare vmdk Disks

You can try the VMWare-Mount utility, but an easier way is to use VMWare Player to "map" the disk in the Utilities menu in Machine Settings.

UEFI Bootable Windows 7 USB Media

Instructions here: http://gitorious.org/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds/pages/Linux_Windows_BIOS_UEFI_boot_USB

Problems with the Thinkpad X220 and GPT, UEFI, MBR and Legacy BIOS Booting

After several days banging my head against a brick wall and suffering the indifference of Lenovo/IBM tech support I have learnt a lot about UEFI, in regards to the X220 in particular.

1. The X220 cannot/will not boot GPT disks using Legacy BIOS. I would call this a bug.
2. The X220 will not boot /efi/*/*.efi unless "signed"(?) into BIOS, you have to copy it to /efi/boot/bootx64.efi. I guess this is a security feature, but I'm not sure how secure it is if you can bypass it so easily.
3. Disabling the BIOS setting "USB UEFI BIOS Support" disables *all* USB booting, ie, both UEFI and legacy BIOS. If this isn't a bug then
   1. it at least needs relabelling,
   2. could be moved/linked to the boot menu and
   3. is redundant as you can disable USB booting using the Boot menu.

I should say that this was with BIOS version 1.22 (I think).

I recommend following these instructions to create a very useful and versatile boot disk for diagnosis.

If you want to use the X220 UEFI boot menu I recommend disabling booting from LAN as it adds a few seconds to the boot time. You have to disable it in several places in the BIOS to avoid the wait.

See also my more general post on Arch Linux on the X220.

Fix HTC HD2 Digitiser/Touchscreen

Make sure you try a soft-reset first by pushing the little red button on the back of the phone while it is on. After four months I just discovered that that fixed it. Luckily I hadn't ordered a new screen/digitiser on ebay.

Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key

I eventually tracked down the above error to the file ~/.Xauthority, which I removed, which solved the problem. Perhaps back it up first.

Using Outlook Web Access

Since my work seem to be refusing to enable IMAP on their new Exchange server and I refuse to use Outlook, which is just too slow and cumbersome for my simple needs, I've spent the last few days getting to know Outlook Web Access, Microsoft Exchange's webmail offering. Here are some tips:

1. If you're using Firefox and are miffed to find that you can only use the "light" version of OWA, don't be, I prefer the light version and would recommend it to IE users too. And no, OWA does not work on Firefox if you fake the User Agent.
2. Don't worry about the missing autocomplete/drop down functionality in the To, CC, etc. fields, type in the names of your recipients separated by semicolons and click Check Names.
3. If you need to import contacts use the desktop version of Outlook.
4. There is no Discard button on the Compose form (my one annoyance so far), so go straight to the drafts folder, use the check box and click Delete.

It's not too bad really.