Other

Provide Internet access to your private lab in Hyper-V using a Windows Server 2016 router

by

Introduction

This is a post on a subject I’m usually not addressing on my blog, but I think having a lab is crucial and super important for any IT pro. A lab for testing and screwing up before screwing up in production is key!

In my example, I’m running a lab in a private and isolated network, but I’m still very interested in providing Internet access for the servers and workstations running inside the lab. This is how to do just that, using the routing feature within Windows Server 2016. (I’m aware that Hyper-V in Server 2016/Windows 10 has a new NAT feature which can do this too, where a router is preferred in a more complex lab with several networks).

Read more…

Dynamic Stamps in Adobe Acrobat

by

This is a tad offtopic, but it took me a while to figure out how to make a dynamic stamp in Adobe Acrobat, as when inserted, prompts the user for input and automatically puts the input on top of the stamp. So here goes: (this requires Adobe Acrobat Pro or the ability to make/edit forms in pdf)

  1. First off, open Adobe Acrobat and go to Comment -> Annotations -> Stamp drop down -> Custom Stamps -> Create Custom Stamp (This is the easy part, so I only touch this briefly)
  2. Browse to your file containing the stamp (I have stamps made in the pdf format. For this I made the stamp in Illustrator)
  3. Give it a name and a category and click OK

With above in place, you now have a new stamp-file located at AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\11.0\Stamps. It’s given a random generic name like “PSrfwCzHqxg6fYZmnjYV0D.pdf”.  So far, so good.

Now go ahead and open and edit this file in Adobe Acrobat Pro and:

  1. Select Tools -> Forms -> Edit
  2. Go to Tasks -> Add New Field -> Button and insert the button somewhere in the blank page
  3. Right Click the new button and select Properties
  4. Go to the Action page, and select Run a JavaScript in the Select Action option.
  5. Click Add and paste following two lines of code into the window and click OK and Close
var aTemplates = this.templates;
if (aTemplates) app.alert(aTemplates.join("\r"));

JavaScriptButtonProperties

Now click the new button with the JavaScript action you just made, and take notice of the template IDs in the popup:

javaScriptWarning

#9a6csAl0hXSlWeY-OYTDiD
#WZtYwuwFlm9eAFnYXvCOGA
#y2fXxVRn8AcGrHnfA2BJdD

Above IDs will be used when creating the text field on the stamp. The text field created in the following steps, is where the input from the prompt goes.

  1. Tasks -> Add New Field -> Text Field
  2. Right Click the new text field and select Properties
  3. Go to the Calculate page and insert a Custom calculation script
  4. Insert below script and make sure to your template IDs from above is correct
  5. Place the text field where desired and save the stamp file
var cAsk = "Enter Appendix Number" ;
var cTitle = "Appendix Number:  ";
if(event.source.forReal && (event.source.stampName == "#9a6csAl0hXSlWeY-OYTDiD"))
{
  var cMsg = app.response(cAsk, cTitle);
  event.value = cMsg;
  event.source.source.info.exhibit = cMsg;
}

Now, when the stamp is inserted from Adobe Reader / Adobe Acrobat following window pops up and the net result is my stamp with my input on top of it.

InsertStamp Stamp