Visio 2013 Connector Text Block Background Color

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I recently switched from Visio 2010 to Visio 2013, and while I quite enjoy the fluidity of 2013′s UI, some of the changes have had me run in circles before finding the 2013 equivalent for 2010 features I already knew. Here’s one of them:

Working on a diagram of our DNS server setup I wanted to adjust the background color of the connector text block. There are many good tutorials on the web on how to accomplish the same in Visio 2010… but in Visio 2013 the “Format” context menu option is gone, and there’s “Format Shape” which opens the Format Shape sidebar which has no options to adjust the text block’s background color.

A text block with the default white background.

A text block with the default white background.

Finally after clicking around for some time I found the new hiding place of the Text Block options. Here’s how:

First left click on the connector to select it; the green and yellow selector indicators show up:

visio_connector_selected

Then click on the little symbol in the lower right corner of Home > Font, or Home > Paragraph area in the ribbon bar. This opens up the text dialog (with ‘Font’ or ‘Paragraph’ tab selected, depending on which area you clicked). Select the “Text Block” tab, and you’ll see “Text background” options:

visio_text_dialog

Now the earlier tutorials I mentioned apply. If you select “None” for the background, or set its Transparency to 100%, you’ll get an undesirable effect:

visio_transparent_textblock

The better option is to use some color picker tool like Nattyware’s free pixie (or one of many other alternatives) to sample the color surrounding the text block and then set the Solid color value to match (with Transparency set to 0%). Or, if you use standard colors in your diagram, select the same standard color for the text block background. Now it looks a lot better:

The little arrow symbols in the lower right corners of various Ribbon areas are good to get to know – lots of options hide behind them! For example, the arrow symbols in Design > Page Setup, or View > Visual Aids open dialogs to many everyday workflow options that are frequently needed.

Finally, couple of other Visio tips. A blog post Work Faster With Our Visio Keyboard Shortcuts by “Visio Guy” outlines the navigation shortcuts that also work with Visio 2013. Mastering and memorizing them makes Visio use a pleasure!

Another task that I frequently run into while using Visio is the need to replace an object, say, a square with another such as a diamond, for example. Visio does not allow you to do this natively. You’ll have to delete the object, reconnect all the connectors, etc. If you have many objects to replace, it translates to a lot of work. Then I found Paul Herber’s Super Utilities and Tools for Visio. Among its many features there is “Shape substitute” command that does exactly that – very handy!

Integrating Shorewall and sshguard on Ubuntu

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I’ve been getting familiar with Shorewall since last fall, and quite like it. I also use sshguard to prevent incessent knocking on SSH and FTP ports. Or I thought I was using sshguard, after all, it was running. Then I realized that I had set up and tested sshguard way before I started using Shorewall, and as my understanding of how Shorewall functions gradually incrased, it eventually occurred to me that Shorewall likely overwrites the ‘placeholder’ chain sshguard needs to function.

I was looking for an easy way to view and occasionally delete sshguard rules, and came across Mika’s post that outlined two handy command line aliases that accomplish just that. While starting to test these, I noticed the ‘sshguard’ chain was nowhere to be found.

My first attempt was to load the sshguard chain with iptables-restore in pre-up, but that disabled the entire network! :D I suppose sshguard chain needs to come after Shorewall chains/rules have been initialized. While I’m not sure if this is the best way to get it working, this does work: I added two lines from sshguard sample ruleset in /etc/rc.local:

Importing Installer ISOs to ESXi 5.x Datastore

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VMware ESXi 5.x service console no longer offers ftpget command. But all is not lost.. :) Follow the steps below to transfer your favorite OS installer ISO to the datastore from where you can conveniently mount it as if it were DVD/CD-ROM:

  1. Download 64-bit ncftp binary distribution to your local (Windows) workstation.
  2. Open vSphere, highlight the hostname, select the the desired storage unit from the Storage list under Resources (I usually use the datastore on the “system” disk for this purpose), and right click on it to open the context menu, then choose “Browse Datastore”.
  3. With the root highlighted, click on the “Upload files to this datastore” (the fourth icon from the left, with green “up” arrow). Select the ncftp binary package (that you download in step 1) from your local Windows hard drive.
  4. After making sure SSH login is enabled on the Yellow and Grey screen (Troubleshooting Options > Enable SSH), log in to the service console via SSH.
  5. Move the ncftp binary archive to /opt from the Datastore root, decompress it, and cd to the ncftp folder:
    cd /opt
    mv /vmfs/volumes/yourdatastore/ncftp* .
    tar zxvf ncftp*
    cd ncftp*
  6. Open ESXi firewall egress (outbound) rules so that the FTP client can access the outside FTP server:
    esxcli network firewall ruleset set -r ftpClient -e true
  7. With your favorite installer ISO available on an FTP server (perhaps on the distribution server, or on your local FTP server), you can now access it, like so:
    ./ncftpget -v -E -u ftpuser -p password some.remotehost.com /vmfs/volumes/mydatastore ‘/remotefilename.iso’

    Command from left to right:
    ncftp command (requires path, here “./” since you’re in the ncftp directory)
    -v for progress indicator
    -E for NOT passive mode (omitting it makes connection passive)
    -u ftpuser for remote ftp server
    -p password for remote ftp server (note: this is NOT sent encrypted!)
    some.remotehost.com is the ftp host name or IP address
    /vmfs/volumes/mydatastore is the path where you want to store the data on the local system
    /remotefilename.iso is the remote file (with full remote path if needed) to be transferred; the local file name will be the same

  8. Optinally, if you want to close the firewall egress rule for the FTP client, you can do so by issuing the following command:
    esxcli network firewall ruleset set -r ftpClient -e false

Now, when starting OS installation in ESXi you can highlight a created blank server instance, click on the CD-ROM icon on the toolbar (“CD/DVD drive 1″ > “Connect to ISO image on a datastore…”), and then navigate to and select the ISO image you just transferred to your favorite datastore!

Finding public IP on Linux command line

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Here’s a handy command to display the Internet facing IP on a Unix/Linux command line. This is particularly useful on systems where lynx is not available, and where the system might be behind a firewall so that the public IP cannot be discerned from ifconfig output.

Ergonomics Recommendations updated!

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I have updated Ville’s Ergonomics Recommendations as of today. Since the list was previously reviewed and updated a few years ago, many links had to be updated along with the content that now reflects the technology today. Hopefully the resource provides useful pointers for anyone looking for information on computer workstation ergonomics!

Note that you can always access the ergonomics resource easily from the blog’s main menu.