I've been using the workaround shown at http://blog.zenspider.com/2008/05/httpsssl-warning-cleanup.html for a while now to eliminate the "using default DH parameters" warning you get when using https in Ruby. However, I recently tried to reference two of my libraries which contained the same workaround in a script and ran into a "stack level too deep" error as the two sets of code both tried to alias the use_ssl= method. I spent some time working on this today and I think I've come up with a better method.

Net::HTTP.ssl_context_accessor(:tmp_dh_callback)
http = Net::HTTP.new('www.example.com', 443)
http.tmp_dh_callback = proc {
  OpenSSL::PKey::DH.new(IO.read('dhparams')) }
http.use_ssl = true

There are a few options for how you create the Diffie-Hellman params. The code above assumes you've got a file with pre-generated params (this is perfectly acceptable from a security standpoint). You can create the file with the "openssl dhparam" command, or a little Ruby script. You could also generate the DH params on the fly, although this can be quite slow:

Net::HTTP.ssl_context_accessor(:tmp_dh_callback)
http = Net::HTTP.new('www.example.com', 443)
http.tmp_dh_callback = proc { OpenSSL::PKey::DH.new(2048) }
http.use_ssl = true

Or if you just want the warning to go away and aren't concerned about the security implications you can just use as empty proc as zenspider did. I've tried to look at the Ruby OpenSSL library source and figure out what happens when the proc doesn't return anything but the code is a bit too obtuse for me to figure out.

Net::HTTP.ssl_context_accessor(:tmp_dh_callback)
http = Net::HTTP.new('www.example.com', 443)
http.tmp_dh_callback = proc {}
http.use_ssl = true

Excel on the Mac defaults to portrait mode. Nearly all spreadsheets I create I want in landscape and finally tracked down how to set this as the default.

• Open up a new document
• Set it to landscape via File -> Page Setup
• Go to File -> Save As
• Switch to the /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/Startup/Excel folder
• Set the filename to Workbook
• Uncheck the Append file extension checkbox
• Save
• Quit and restart Excel

Your workbooks should now be landscape by default.

You can find this in the Excel help. Don't use the Help menu item on the main Mac menu bar, Excel's help isn't available there. Instead click the Help button on the toolbar in an Excel document to bring up the Excel help system and look for the "Control how workbooks and sheets are created" document, available under Contents -> Customizing Excel.