http://virusscan.jotti.org can scan an uploaded file with 22 virus scanners - a good thing!

(It's no replacement for running your own antivirus on your desktop, of course, but a good tool to know about.)

While I'm on the subject, the following are all goodness when it comes to computer rescue or checking:

BitDefender
Knoppix
BartPE
Trinity Rescue (nice virus scanners included)
Ultimate Boot CD

We're starting to use password grids at work.

So here's a little Python hack for making some password grids. A few notes concerning the password chars:

a) a limited set of chars is used to avoid the necessity of two handed (shift!) typing
b) it doesn't have 0 (zero) or 1 (one), to avoid confusion with 'o' and 'l'

See a sample grid made with this tool.

Another generator, web based.

Nice. A defragmenter that can be used for the screensaver...

http://www.emro.nl/freeware/
(plus a description here)

Aside from the venerable Knoppix, Trinity Rescue looks like a nice linux rescue distro, complete with four virus scanners. For a non-Microsoft Windows boot disk, BartPE looks useful (note: you need an XP install CD to build your BartPE boot disk with).

Who the funt makes hardware these days without a method of doing a factory reset? I have a printer sharing network box that is now a brick with no way of recovering it.

And as the reviewer below points out, the default admin password is given nowhere. You have to guess it (or find this review).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product//B000GHFLGK/ref=cm_rv_thx_view/202-5451530-6853428

Asshats.

Update

Whoops, me asshat too, for not realising that my updated version *does* have a reset.

Odd. My internet connection seems to have had not one but two problems since the recent changing of NTL/telewest into Virgin Media...

1) My Scientific Atlanta WebStar DPX100 modem wasn't maintaining a connection (the 'cable' light was flashing - should be solid) - technician came out today, looked at modem, said "There's a 10dB attenuator on the end of the cable there - at one time your signal was too strong, but it isn't any more, so we'll remove that and it should work". So he did remove the little plug on the end, reconnected the cable, and it worked in as much as I got a connection of sorts back.

2) Noticed later on today that the speed of my connection was pants - about 0.5mb/s. I'm on a 10mb/s deal so that's rubbish. So phoned support, they asked me what the modem web page said - turns out the downstream frequency, which should be 331000000 Hz, was something like 331250000. He immediately recognised this as a problem, saying that "For some reason, each of those makes of modems at one time in its life loses the correct frequency." To fix, I had to go to the URL http://192.168.100.1/gscan.htm (not linked to anywhere from in the regular pages for the modem!) and manually enter the correct frequency and hit 'restart' button.

Now I have full speed again. The guy recommended testing the speed by downloading two files simultaneously from the virgin game downloads (e.g. http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/battlefield1942/demo/win32/), and summing their speed. Doing this did indeed give me just about 1 megabyte a secod, which is what it should be...

Of interest:

http://www.gordonmclean.co.uk/index.php/archives/2007/03/15/webstar-cable-modem

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/48893-modem-trouble-shoot.html

http://www.broadbandreports.com/faq/ukbb/3.1._Hardware_Software_Troubleshooting

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/

http://member.antihotmail.com/faq/sciatl/all

Manuals for the DPX100:

http://www.sciatl.com/products/consumers/userguidepdfs/webstar_userguides/2100B.pdf

http://www.everestkc.net/files/downloads/DPX100UserGuide_749779a.pdf

Annoyingly, neither manual seems to mention the gscan.htm trick. So what other tricks are up my modem's sleeve? I wonder where the full manual could be found...

Ok, Finder has been going nuts on my Mac. I started researching it and it sounded like I was having problems with cached system files (icons etc).  I found a wonderful program, AppleJack, which appears  (fingers crossed) to have fixed my problems!

Another problem I was having was that my external LaCie hard disk wasn't appearing in Finder (I could still access it as /Volumes/LaCie Disk on command line, but what a pain....). After running AppleJack, it's back...

Update
There's lots of very nice utils out there for helping with Mac maintenance...

These two help with general mantenance tasks (e.g. clearing caches etc):

Yasu: http://jimmitchell.org/projects/yasu/

MainMenu: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17111


SMARTrreporter checks periodically for SMART disk failure:  http://homepage.mac.com/julianmayer/
(note: firewire/USB disks can't be SMART monitored)

This is a very good page about general Mac issues: http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Description of what BSD maintenance scripts actually do: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html

I'm enjoying using Mac Os X (10.4.8). However, there are a few 'gaps' in my user experience which are really noticable because they're so fundamental, and I'm so used to having them (in XP)...

I'm finding spotlight distinctly lacking in the amount of information it shows about search results. If I do a search and click 'show all results', the resulting window show filenames only. I want to be able to see file sizes, file locations (i.e. which folder they are in), etc. listed next to each file. I know that I can hover over items to see the path, or click the 'i' symbol to see info - but this is so much less powerful than just being able to see the info next to each item (and also to be able to sort the list by varous properties). Makes me sad to say it, but unless I'm missing something, I'm finding spotlight is weak compared to old Windows Search... it finds files very fast too. It just doesn't give me the damn information I need!

The other biggy (for me): in Finder, when viewing a folder, I'd love to be able to see the full folder path in the title bar (and there's no lack of room up there usually!), or somewhere similar. Yet, doing command-i (for info) seems to be the most obvious way to check out the location of what I'm viewing.... is there any better way?

If Mac Os X can't do these things, I'm going to track down some software that will help with it. (Crosses fingers...)

Update
Ah, thank fookery for sane people writing free, usable software to replace the dropped scone that is SpotLight:

SpotLaser: http://members.optusnet.com.au/frovil/spotlaser.html
NotLight: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29015
EasyFind: http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/index.html
NameFind: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29104
LiveSearch: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20044
FoxTrot Personal Search: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28446

Also, there's an interesting article here about troubleshooting SpotLight issues: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20061109235901299

I'm dumping spotlight though - it's just rubbish. I didn't use Mac Os before 10.4, and have just found out how much they crippled spotlight in version 10.4 - it used to be vaguely useful, from the look of it!

I've been playing about with running a non-Mac OS on my Intel-based Mac Mini (core duo). Currently I've been using XP as the other OS, but equally linux or something else could be used....

The two technologies I've looked at are Parallels  and Bootcamp.

	Bootcamp	Parallels
Cost	the Beta is free, the full version will come as part Tiger OS X	80 USD
Target OS	XP (although some people report booting Linux ok)	Many (Windows, Linux, etc.)
Mode of operation	You boot into either OS (dual boot system)	While running Mac OS, you launch windows in its own 'sandbox' virtual machine system
Guest OS filesystem is...	a seperate partition on your disk - so repartitioning required! (Bootcamp does the repartitioning for you)	stored as one large (image) file on your normal Mac OS filesystem - no risk!
Risk involved	medium - disk repartitioning is required	very low - no messing with your partitions
Ease of setup	medium - disk repartitioning is required! (reportedly Bootcamp is now less flaky than it used to be about messing up your HD - and mine didn't get messed up, but it wasn't straightforward - see text below table)	easy
Ease of backing up your entire guest OS	Not simple - may need disk tools like Norton Ghost etc.	very easy - you just make a copy of the virtual disk image in Mac OS
Can resize guest OS disk?	I don't think so - and if you can, it's risky (playing with real disk partitions!)	very easy, plus Parallels disk images actually expand as needed (up to a maximum you can set/change), so they start off quite small, e.g. my XP install disk image was just over a gig to start with
After guest OS installation, don't forget to...	Install the windows devices drivers for the mac hardware - Apple give you these, and all in one, which is handy	install Parallel Tools to the guest OS - markedly improves performance. Also a disk compressor utility is available, worth running periodically

Bootcamp - a few gotchas

• Disk repartitioning hold ups: first of all, you need at least 10gig free. And even if you have 10gig free, the repartitioning may refuse to run with a message about "Couldn't move some files" - not a very helpful message! Turns out the actual problem is that you don't have enough contiguous free disk space to move a file of a certain size. The solution is to either a) defrag your mac hard disk using (non-free) tools, or b) move some large files off your mac HD to elsewhere, do the repartitioning, then move back if need be. Option B fixed this problem for me...
  


• USB hubs and/or KVM switches: when installing XP on a mac with bootcamp, anything other than directly connected USB mouse and keyboard, and directly connected monitor, didn't work. I had to ditch any USB hubs and my KVM just for the XP install; once installed, I could reinstate those things again.
  

Other notes

Reducing XP installation size

The OU are putting their learning materials online. e.g. "The use of photographs as social documentation", if that pumps your nads at all:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1297

Lots of VMware virtual appliances are now available. And VMware now do a free player too.

Yum - StopBadware - comprehensive details on naugty software.

Also, FairUse4WM looks interesting. Not that I own any windows DRM'ed content!

Nasty. If you or anyone you know uses RealVNC, make sure it is upgraded to the latest version (4.1.2). Versions 4.1.0 and 4.1.1 have a nasty exploit that means that someone can connect without knowing the password. The first I knew of this was that a bowser kept being launched on my PC at home, going to the URL of some executable files at the Irish Kennel Club web site which, it is a safe bet, contain nasty trojans or viruses. I eventually spotted how they were launching a browser - they were (via their exploit RealVNC connection) going Start menu -> Run, then typing the URL of the nasty file, which would cause windows to launch a browser containing that URL. (This was done by a script at their end because it was almost too fast to see happening!)

http://metasploit.com/projects/Framework/exploits.html#realvnc_41_bypass

Am using del.icio.us now - my delicious page.

TestDisk and PhotoRec - excellent free photo recovered and disk related software!

Hugin - cross platform GUI for panorama tools...

Little article on Hugin.

Why are morons regularly in the position of making decisions?
And which moron thinks that web-presented tech manuals, that you can't download, are a good idea?
Which moron thinks it is a good use of anybodies time to have to press a 'print this page button' for every page of a manual?
And which fooking moron doesn't realise that if you're setting up an ADSL router, you problably won't have fooking web access at the time you're setting up the router?

This is the offender, btw.

Hadn't heard of TrueCrypt until just now... free open-source on-the-fly disk encryption.

ViewVC: CVS/SVN web based reposity viewing

Ask Slashdot article on source code control and related, some good links

re: Thunderbird mail....

Note to self: when deleting a virus laden email from your Inbox (that is causing antivirus software to annoyingly quarantine your inbox file every night), remember to actually do "Compress folders" after deleting the offensive email and emptying the trash!

Interesting article by Guido Van Rossum about the fate of reduce() and similar things in Python 3000.

PC Inspector Smart Recovery - a compact flash (and other media) file recovery program, and it is free, which seems rare for this particular area.

Just used Bart's BootCD to create a custom boot CD for a machine. PCs without floppy drives - nein in brine!