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Posts Tagged tools

What makes your life easier?

Jan 26

Posted by chuck in Tech | Comments off

Well, you may have not noticed, and judging from the responses I got, you haven’t, that I got rid of the RSS Calendar thing in the sidebar. Sadly, I don’t have enough calendar-y things to fill it up with. I have a reminder tiddler set up that I check every day and I’ve got my ‘In the next two months’ page to keep me updated with my ever-changing to-do list. Don’t get me wrong, RSSCalendar is very cool, but it just wasn’t for me.

In that frame of mind, I’ve recently been trying out some new toys and have compiled a list of applications that I’ve come to depend on. Now, everybody has a list of this same kind of thing, but this one is simply to document the programs and webpages that help me get through the day. I highly recommend them all:

  1. Firefox – Once and for all, get rid of Internet Explorer (well, stop using it, at least). Out of the dozen or so problems I’ve fixed for friends and family just this year, more than half can be directly traced back to a spyware-infested, toolbar-riddled copy of Internet Explorer. Spread the word.
  2. del.icio.us – Bookmarks be damned. Del.icio.us puts your favorites where you want them, on the web. I can access all of my favorite web sites anywhere I go now. Use the built-in bookmarking feature of Firefox to store your private or temporary links, but give the rest of them to del.icio.us. You’ll find other people that have bookmarked the same page as you and you’ll be able to crawl around inside their list of favorites and maybe find something new. It’s the web – it’s about sharing!
  3. Clipmarks – Wanna save only a small section of a web page? Maybe just that one paragraph that mentions the time you won the pie eating contest in the local news? Or the picture that went along with the article? Clipmarks will stash away a copy of just what you want. Your clips are taggable, of course, and can be set as public or private. Just like del.icio.us, you’ll find others with similar interests and will be swapping clipmarks in no time.
  4. ScrapBook for Firefox – Another reason to switch to Firefox…a Firefox extension that does what del.icio.us can’t. ScrapBook stores a local copy of a web page on your hard drive. A snapshot, if you will. I use it when I want to grab an article from an online newspaper, because those links eventually expire and all your left with is a link that goes nowhere. Store complete web copies of your credit report or Visa bill. Grab a copy of an up-to-the-minute online sports ticker. I don’t know… grab anything! Because now you can.
  5. AxCrypt – I don’t know about you but I carry a flash drive (or two) around with me all the time. Heaven forbid I should ever lose one, but if I did, at least I know no one could get at my data. AxCrypt is a super-easy, free, personal file encryption, compression and transparent decrypt-er in one application. What does that mean? It means nobody’s reading my data with out my password. Oh, it works on any file, not just thumb-drives. Password protect your budget, your love letters or your private documents. Then sleep easy.
  6. KeePass – Got a ton of passwords to remember? Are you one of those people that use the same password for every account, email or on-line game site? Well, grab a copy of KeePass and start managing those passwords. KeePass let’s you set a passphrase or a keyfile to protect your passwords and stores your passwords in an encrypted database. The database consists of only one file, so it can be easily transferred from one computer to another (or to a thumb-drive!). It will also generate more acceptable, harder-to-guess, passwords for you if you wish. So now you can stop using ‘fifi89′ for everything.
  7. SyncBack Freeware V3.2.9 – The first rule of data retention… backup, backup, backup. One day your hard-drive may crash. Or the ceiling will leak water onto your computer. Or you’ll accidentally type ‘format c: /u’ at a command prompt. It all means the same thing… your data is gone! Hope you have a backup. SyncBack will allow you to set up multiple profiles and schedules to accommodate all your data backup needs. Backup to hard disk, external media or FTP site. Remember, backup now or cry later.
    P.S. make sure you get the free version of SyncBack. I haven’t tried the commercial version. Although I’m sure it’s great, the freeware does me just fine.

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Ghost in the Machine?

Jan 10

Posted by chuck in Tech | Comments off

I’m the computer geek in my circle of friends and family. This, of course, means that I’m the first-level tech support whenever something goes wrong with anybody’s computer. Phone support is usually pretty easy (left-click the start button… left-click ‘run’… type ‘msconfig’ in the little box… click ‘ok’… [[30 minutes later]] ok, now reboot!) I love the fact that I’m able to help everybody out but sometimes the problem is so big or weird that it can’t be described over the phone. In that case, a house call is in order. I’ll throw a couple flash drives and CD’s in a bag and head over the visit the sick computer in person (usually in exchange for pizza and beer).

This arrangement works well as long as the sick computer has the courtesy to break down in the evening or on a weekend when I have no other plans. If not, it has to wait hours, days or sometimes weeks until I can get around to it.

Until now…
The other day while random-clicking, I found an open-source application called TightVNC:

TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.

After playing around with it for a while at work I tried an experiment: I loaded the server on my work PC and set a password. I then went to another department and sat down at somebody else’s computer. I plugged in my flash drive and loaded the VNC client (a one-file executable) and Voila! I was sitting in front of my own PC again! COOL! This will be very useful on the internal network at work. But how will it work in the ‘real-world’? I decided to find out.

That night I loaded the server on my machine at home. I’d almost forgotten it until Carrie called me at work a few days later because she was having problems with an unruly program at home. After trying in vain to understand what she was trying tell me was going wrong I told her I was going to try to ‘dial-in’ (There’s got to be a better word for that… I wasn’t dialing anything. But, “I’m V-N-C’ing in” sounds retarded)
A couple minutes later I was looking at my home desktop and solving the problem!

Since then I’ve talked my niece through installing the server on her computer and helped her with a problem and installed the server on a couple other PC’s in an attempt at proactive maintenance.

Now that I’m able to sit in front of my PC and see other peoples PC’s I can bet I’ll be solving a lot more problems. But solving problems from my own living room is pretty cool.

Even if it does mean a lot less pizza and beer.

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