Uninstall. Delete. Remove. Hocus Pocus! Abracadabra? Presto Chango! Needs more magic.

I came across a great little free software package today called Revo Uninstaller. This awesome program produces a screen very much like the built-in windows Add/Remove Programs control panel utility but it contains so much more.

At first glance I wasn’t sure what to expect, except that the website stated all sorts of neat things and I wanted to see them in action! First up, the uninstaller. To your right is a screenshot of the uninstall portion of the program. It lists all your installed programs (as far as I can tell) and easily lets you uninstall a program or just remove an entry. The “remove entry” feature is very useful, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to manually delete a program and had its entry left behind in Add/Remove Programs. Revo solves that problem!

Also included (still free!) is the junk file cleaner. Seen here, the list of junk files is empty. I would’ve run the scan to give you an idea of what it shows, but the scan takes a while. Revo will offer to delete any of those junk files, and will even inform you if it can’t remove any files due to them being in use by a program or by windows. Very nice.

I’m certain I’ll be using this tool a lot, as it’s already proven useful in the half-hour I’ve had it. If you’d like your own copy, visit the download link below.

Thanks to Kent and his blog for leading me to this software.

Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware – Free and Full Download

Writing a Post with WLW

So I’ve decided to do a quick primer on how to write a nicely formatted blog post using only Windows Live Writer. Now when it comes to my blog, I don’t normally format it much. The default style that’s applied to my blog is enough to satisfy me. I do sometimes like to post pictures, though. So let’s do that now. Voila, now I’ve added a picture to this post. The best part is that WLW will automatically start wrapping my text around the image as I’m filling out my blog post. Windows Live Writer takes all the best parts of blogging and makes it that much more simple. If you’re watching the shockwave tutorial, you’ll see many “Insert” links along the side. These links provide quick shortcuts for adding pictures, hyperlinks, tables, maps, video, Amazon.com book details, code, and more! Many enthusiastic WLW hobbyists have contributed their own plugins as well, giving you that much more functionality. I’m going to wrap up this post now, and provide a link to the location of the screencast so you can watch the tutorial.

Normally when done writing a post you’d click “Publish”, but we’re going to save this so that I can stop the recording.

http://screencast.com/t/Dv79c9fW

Room with a View

One great thing about working here at Oyen Wiggs is the spectacular view from some of the partners’ offices. Below is a photo taken from the balcony, but some of the partners have this view from their offices, and they don’t even have to worry about the weather. I was lucky taking my photos, it’s been gorgeous (but cold) these past couple days. The picture is a bit dark, but the amount of detail when looking at the mountains is simply incredible.

WordPerfect gives me chills.

 

While attempting to fix a user’s WordPerfect installation, I stumbled across this horrid issue with WordPerfect’s ruler. Notice that the ruler is in the document, and there’s no way for me to move it back to the toolbar. My only option is to hide the ruler, but then I have no ruler to work with. I’ve uninstalled and deleted everything to do with WordPerfect, and even after a clean reinstall… this problem still remained. Obviously I missed something, but I don’t know what, or where it is. Plus, google happens to be useless for this issue. Right now I’ve left it without a solution, because as far as I’m aware there isn’t one. I’m not one for giving up, but I definitely need to take a break and look at this from a different angle. It’s such a strange phenomenon. I’m not even sure how the user got their ruler into the main document window. This particular issue is driving me nuts, especially since I’m such a stickler for solving these sorts of problems.

Funny Image of the Day

I couldn’t resist posting this amusing image from my Page-A-Day calendar of Stupid Things People Say.

MacBook Air is full of hot air. (Pun intended)

Reading through Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite blog I was actually surprised to find I feel the same way about Apple’s new MacBook Air. Originally I was impressed, then I started reading through the specs and found that it lacks a LOT of features, even for an ultra-portable.

My boss at my last employer had a fetish for ultra-portable devices and he usually had 3 or 4 on hand. What this meant was that I was always aware of the newer ultra-portable notebooks on the market. I’ve seen much better notebooks than the MacBook Air, with a smaller footprint and a lighter weight. Toshiba’s Portégé series of notebooks are lighter, have more features, and don’t skimp on the necessary things. I feel Apple went a bit too far with the Air.

As Paul mentions in his blog post, the Air relies on wireless for just about everything. I see this as a shortcoming unless you a) don’t care about secure communications, or b) you don’t DO any secure work on your laptop. They allow you to buy an ethernet adapter so that you don’t have to rely solely on wireless, but it’ll cost you $29 extra. Oh, and it’ll take up that one, lonely USB slot. That’s right, you’ll use your one USB slot almost immediately if you have to do any serious work. Apple also offers the nifty new Solid State Harddrive option for the Air, but they don’t tell you it’s going to add $999 onto the price tag.  If you find out that you need an optical drive you can add one on to your order, for $99 extra. Uh oh, you already have your USB slot taken up by the ethernet adapter you bought. No worries! Buy a USB hub and now you’ve got a few more slots. But wait, you want to bring all these things on the road with you? Worry not, my friend… Many laptop-case manufacturers would be ecstatic to sell you an oversized and overpriced laptop bag to carry all your MacBook Air accessories.

Now, reading through the comments on Paul’s site, many users stated that all the things the MacBook Air does not have are things they wouldn’t miss. Though most of these users admitted they don’t have an ultra-portable at the moment. Let me tell you folks, I’ve used ultra-portables before… Not having a CD drive is annoying, and in the case of the MacBook Air you won’t even have an ethernet port unless you buy it, that’s more than annoying. And get this… No. Removable. Battery. Yes, you read that right. The battery is not removable. So what happens if you’re out on a flight, or the road, and your battery dies? Well, if you’re smart you’ve also bought the car charger, portable diesel-powered generator, and hand-crank adapter. Oh, you didn’t buy those? Well then, you’re out of luck.

My overall feeling about the MacBook Air is disappointment. Apple comes out with all these sleek new “innovations” but in this department they fall short of what’s already out there. Even the price isn’t that great compared to similar offerings by other manufacturers. Generation 1 of the MacBook Air is definitely not on my want list. I guess I’ll wait for Gen 2.

Save Windows XP

Reading through Kent’s blog I stumbled upon yet another blog through his “shared” items, and the headline caused a flutter in my stomach. Brace yourself, this could get ugly.

Microsoft plans to discontinue Windows XP on June 30th, 2008.

Yes, you heard it here first. No, wait, second. No… fifth? Twentieth? Anyway, you heard it here! There is a petition to stop the madness, and I truly hope MS will listen to the consumer on this one. According to the article:

In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn’t support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium’s failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.

If Microsoft decides to stick with their original plan to decommission Windows XP on June 30th then I foresee stores like Future Shop overrun with manic, crazed shoppers buying up every last copy of XP “just in case.” We may be doomed.

Musical Inspiration

I normally don’t post music on this blog, but below are some lyrics taken from one of Sander Kleinenberg’s live sets. Somehow they affect me on more than one level, they’re quite provocative. They give me a chill when heard in the context of the Sander’s live set, too, because they’re read aloud by a young girl.

It’s quiet now
And as I think my thoughts alone
I try to keep my head straight
But I think I’m too far gone
For in the silence
A truth rings even louder
A constant grinding, begging recognition of its power
Through its eyes I take the trip,
Destiny: the place
Of pain and pleasure absolute,
where sorrow has a face
A place of time, where spirit,
asked to stand and hold its ground,
has lost its equilibrium
and is slowly sinking down.

Down into the darkness
that the lack of will affords.
Down into the shadows,
past the junkies, past the whores.

Down into the mire,
suffocating all that lives
But if I say I care, I lie,
for I have no more left to give
Well I s’pose a hand would help.
Oh yeah there’s no-one here.
Guess that’s what I wanted.
Once again my greatest fear -

I just longed to hear a bird’s song
Just to let me know there’s light,
but as we all know
a songbird never sings its song at night.

But it’s quiet now.
A thought, a subtle image,
comes creeping round again.
A vision, clear as day
projects onto my lens.

If my little heart pounds in hope
for once all hope’s not lost,
but even as I try I find
the truth demands a cost
exacted from my soul,
my only means of recompense,
taken as a toll -
for even knowledge charges rent -
removed from me without consent.

I’m now a hole to fill,
compounded by the fact
that I hear the grinding still.
The darkness, sure and silent,
grows fast beyond my reach.
A ray of light has not a chance -
the shadows can’t be breached.
A fight ensues: and all is waged,
until the end has come.
A battle, pits the father against the son.

But now I ask the guide,
of this my final fate
as I’m lead into the sound,
I hear the closing of the gate.
The silence I once feared,
at last my final end.

The silence I once hated,
has become my only friend .

Again.

It’s quiet now

7 Things I Already Knew But Probably Wasn’t Supposed To…

So I was reading Kent’s blog (my boss at OWGM) and he had a neat post about an article on PCWorld.com titled 7 Things Your Company’s IT Department Doesn’t Want You to Know. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I can learn anything from this seeing as this is the sort of thing I’m supposed to be watching for.” After reading the article I felt a bit cheated. “Wait a second,” I thought, “these are all the ways that I used to cheat the system!” It’s actually not a bad little compendium of subversive tricks for getting around tight computer-use policies. Check it out if you’re feeling locked down at work.

A few things they didn’t mention in the article…

• Tor
• VNC
• RDP
• SSH

These are all things that allow you to either encrypt your traffic and hide it, or use a remote computer. Tor stands for “The Onion Router” and is a protocol that was created to make the Internet more anonymous. Using Tor and a local proxy, you can pipe connections through the proxy out into the Tor universe (which is comprised of a bunch of random servers around the world). Every time your connection is passed off to a new server, the information given is only enough so that the server knows to say “Is the destination nearby? If so, connect to it. If not, pass it along the chain further.” This is a layman’s analogy, but it works. Your “connection” is bundled and unbundled at each exit node until it reaches the web site or server you’re trying to connect to. That server only sees the IP address and information of the exit node. A fun way to test this is to install the Tor package for windows from the above listed website, turn on Tor and visit whatismyip.com. Every time you refresh it should be a different IP address. You can also host your own Tor exit node if you happen to have a lot of bandwidth or a dedicated server. (Note: I’ve done this on one of my dedicated servers and my bandwidth usage shot sky-high. User Beware.)

VNC, RDP, and SSH are all protocols for connecting to computers remotely. There are many free remote-control programs that make use of VNC. RDP is the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol. It’s what you use to connect to Terminal Server sessions, but Windows XP and Vista (Business and Ultimate) also have it built in. I use RDP to connect to my computer at home, and it’s as though I’m typing at the keyboard. Finally, SSH is a protocol for encrypting shell connections. It’s most commonly used with *nix servers, but you can install a windows version if you want to host your own SSH server. I use it when connecting to my dedicated Linux box. Putty is a good tool for connecting to SSH from Windows.

In closing, all the above methods will work for circumventing many strict policy rules, because you’re either a) hiding your connection, or b) connecting to a different computer entirely.

Tools of the Trade

Wow, I just discovered Windows Live Writer. This tool is amazing! The ability to write to my blog using a WYSIWYG editor is just awesome! More updates later!

Yes, that’s a screenshot of me creating this very entry using Windows Live Writer. Dang that’s a neat tool!