Don’t worry it’s not anything that you’ll get in trouble for !

Scott Mills from Radio1 has set up a webcam in the Radio1 offices, take a look at;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/scottmills/

Those of you who have read my previous posts will no I wasn’t a fan of O2’s decision to give unlimited mobile Internet to IPhone users only.

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Recently Microsoft has filed a patent for a system that can monitor workers. Not just the usual Internet and Email. Actually monitor you physically, and to an extent mentally.
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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have a rabbit. But seeing as we live in a 1st floor flat, we can’t really have a real rabbit. But instead, my girlfriend Joanne got me a Nabaztag rabbit, I named him Rowdy (after JD’s stuffed dog).
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I was training today and was ‘moaning’ about inserting large images into PowerPoint. So I thought I’d do a quick entry about how to do this using some free software available on the net.

After the course I did a quick google for ‘free jpg resizer’ and up came 2,280,000 results. Obviously not all of them will do the job, but a lot do!

The one I personally prefer is called Easy Thumbnails, I have used it in the past and found it very simple to use, and quite small in size at only a 1mb download. Easy Thumbs allows you to shrink or enlarge indiviual or batch images to the size you specify. The other reason I prefer Easy Thumbs is that it has support for Vista, not all I saw did.

… And as I said above, I was looking for free software, Easy Thumbs is freeware, so just download and away you go!

If you want to download Easy Thumbs, go to http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/

Arron

Someone asked me today about a problem they were having with XP, when he minimised any program it disappeared. It wasn’t minimising to the toolbar, I said I’d have a hunt for the answer, here it is…

I would still recommend a full Antivirus and Spyware scan before running this fix, as it could more than likely be either of those. If it comes back clean then download and run the following file:

I found this after a quick search on google, thanks to Kell’s Korner for the solution http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm (Go to line 240).

Just a quick one…
I read an article (Issue: 148, Page 136, or http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/100126/mozy.html) in PC Pro recently (I know I’m a bit behind on the PC Pro’s), about online backups. It got me thinking… all the backups I have (and there are a few scattered all over)…

Some are on CDs, DVDs, USB Pen Drives, Hard Disks, all sorts! My data is backed up all over the place, the problem is the ‘place’ is my home. All these backups are in the flat, if something were to happen (touch wood) all my data is gone.

So after reading the article I had a look at Mozy (I choose it because it was free!). I say it’s free, buts its only free for the 1st 2gb, you have to pay for more than that.
Mozy is pretty simple. The interface is simple to use, it can scan your disks for specific data types, Word, Excel, Favorites and also your my documents. This is ideal for home users with little experiance. If your a bit more advanced there are ‘advanced’ features, not very advanced but enough. You have a tab for the file system, to let you choose the specific files or folders.

Then there’s the option to schedule the backups to happen automatically so you don’t have to remember to backup your files.
You have two options when scheduling, 1) Automatic - This performs the backup automatically when your computer is idle, you can set the amount of time to wait before starting the backup.
2) Scheduled - The kind of schedule you would expect, you simply set either daily or weekly backups.

As far as security geos, Mozy uses 448-bit Blowfish encryption, you can choose to use Mozy’s key, or enter your own.

Mozy keeps track of all the computers you have backed up from, but allows you to restore to any PC by simply logging in to the website.
There is also a referrals option, give the link to your friends and for each one that signs up and uses Mozy, you get an extra 256mb of space. I considered putting my link on here but thought that may simply just be wrong (Damn conscience!).Overall, I think Mozy is a great way of securing your data away from home. If your looking to back up huge amounts of data, or want lots of advanced options then seek another product. But I will personally continue to use Mozy as I just want to keep my critical data safe, thats it simple.

So following on from the previous post, I’ve been playing with WPS for a week now, on and off. The Script I’ve been playing around with was aimed at Event Logs.
The script has gone through many variations, it started off as just retrieving all the events from the application log and putting them in an HTML file.

I’ve now got to the point where the script prompts for the log you would like to check , then filters the output to include only warnings and errors. Then colour codes the results (Errors – Red, Warnings – Yellow).

The file is then saved with a filename that consists of the host name and eventlog name.
Please feel free to have use the script and to amend it if you wish. I am not finished with the script myself yet, there are still a few things I would like to be able to add to it;

-          Checking Remote hosts

-          Including a quit option

-          Being able to check all logs at once

There’s probably more but it’s getting late, and I’m going to bed! If anyone makes any improvements they have made to the script I would love to see them, just add them as comments to this post!

The script is below, just copy and paste to a file and save with a .ps1 extension.

Arron

CLS

Ok first of all as you may have noticed, I haven’t posted for a while! Appologies! I will get my finger out of the next week or so and make up for it.
Moving on… Windows PowerShell. The new scripting technology from Microsoft. Let me just say, I’m not a programmer/scripter and never have been.
But I’ve recently started tinkering with this again. I say again, because I was first inspired to ‘play’ with this about a year ago when I was at a Technet briefing at MS and Thomas Lee (PCPro columnist) was showing it off. It was then know as Microsoft Scripting Host and was still in development. Thomas was really excited about WPS and that really came across, he spent quite a while showing what WPS could do, but more importantly how easy it was to use.
Thomas explained that MS had tried to design WPS to be an easy conversion whether you are used to Linux, or VB. The problem I had was I wasn’t used to either. I downloaded the BETA anyway and played. After a while I managed to get it to do some clever things (although most came from scribbling notes while watching Thomas). But I must admit I gave up after a while, I think partly due to the lack of support, and I didn’t really have a use for the scripts.
I have downloaded it again (after coming across it on the MS site), and started to use it again, I’ve already got further in an hour than I did before in 4 -5 hours. The main reason for this is due to the documentation and support from MS. When you install the software there are four Word documents installed with it, ranging from a quick start guide to a full user guide. There is also a Windows PowerShell Blog (see https://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/) which has links to helpful scripts, ideas, and training.
If you are a system administrator WPS could really save you some time, and make your life easier. I personally have found it much easier than any other language I’ve looked at.
Download Windows PowerShell at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx where you will also find links to help.
I really am trying to get to grips with WPS and will hopefully be posting some success stories soon (fingers crossed) and possibly some scripts. If anyone else has thoughts, or ideas or anything that may help me please leave comments on here for me!

I know I said my next post would be about Office but I was looking around the Microsoft site and found this so I thought Office could wait.
Microsoft has rolled up all of the Sysinternal tools in to a easy to download 1 stop shop suite. It has all the usual tools you normally download (sorry to those of you who took the time to download all the tools individually).
To download the SysInternals suite go to: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/SysinternalsSuite.mspx
To download the tools individually go to: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilitiesindex.mspx