GnuWin32

GnuWin32: "GnuWin32 provides Win32 (MS Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / XP) ports of tools with a GNU or similar open source license. The ports are native ports, that is they rely only on libraries provided with any standard 32-bits MS-Windows operating system."
Summary
Packages Include:

• GNU utilities: bc, bison, chess, compface, cpio, coreutils (fileutils, sh-utils, stat, textutils), diffutils, doschk, ed, findutils, flex, gawk, gdbm, gcal, gengetopt, gettext, gperf, grep, groff, gsl, gzip, hello, help2man, iconv, jwhois, less, m4, miscfiles, patch, readline, regex, rx, sed, sharutils, tar, texinfo, tree, units, unrtf, wget, which
• Archivers and compressors: arc, arj, bsdtar, bzip2, gzip, lha, libarchive, unzip / zip, zlib
• Other utilities: byacc, cpuid, cygutils, file, ntfsprogs, openssl, pcre, popt, re2c, rpl, sgrep, tree, x86info
• Graphics packages: asciichart, compface, gd, jpeg, jbigkit, liburt, libungif, libpng and png utilities, libwmf, netpbm, piechart, plotutils, tiff, xpm, zimg
• Textprocessing- and postscript-related packages: a2ps, barcode, bm2font, deroff, dvidj, enscript, freetype, grap, gri, groff, indent, libxml, nenscript, pdflib, polyglotman, psutils, scribe2latex, src-highlite, t1lib, t1utils, troff2latex, ttf2pt1, unrtf
• Mathematical and statistical packages: bc, calc, crypt, fdlibm, gsl, units

Mount .iso files under windows XP

This free program for Windows XP lets you create a virtual CD drive on your hard disk. winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe

For anyone unfamiliar with the terms 'virtual CD' or 'CD emulator', they mean that you can copy the entire contents of a CD-ROM to your hard disk and run the programs or access the files without the original CD in your machine. This can make files more accessible, faster and more convenient. Given the speed and size of today's hard drives, you could easily fit a number of CDs onto your hard drive without noticing the difference. Assuming you had 30 full CDs, these would take around 20GB on a hard drive and all will be accessible after a few clicks of a mouse.

Why would we want to do this?

One reason is convenience, imagine needing several (handfuls of) discs that you need to carry with you. Using a virtual CD, you can simply keep an image of the disc on your hard drive and access it with a drive letter as needed - no disc. In my laptop, the secondary battery takes place of my CD/DVD drive but I can still access the files I need through the Virutal CD drive.

A second reason is speed. Hard drives are about 10 times faster than a CD, plus you can instantly access the file instead of grabbing the CD case, inserting the CD and awaiting for the contents to load. It's true, you could try copying the files over to the hard drive, but this can get messy, plus some programs require a CD to be loaded in order to run. This virtual CD program 'pretends' it is a CD drive (even though the files are on your hard drive), so your programs will run as normal.

Note: This tool only works with ISO images - not BIN/CUE image sets.

Readme for Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel v2.0.1.1

THIS TOOL IS UNSUPPORT BY MICROSOFT PRODUCT SUPPORT SERVICES


System Requirements
===================
- Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional

Installation instructions
=========================
1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click "Driver control"
4. If the "Install Driver" button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click "Start"
6. Click OK
7. Click "Add Drive" to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click "Add Drive" until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click "Mount".
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click "OK". UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.

You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control.

For a more completed tutorial (including how to make an ISO from a CD) click here. The article explains making an ISO using Nero - however, I prefer BurnAtOnce which is donationware.

Show Password onMouseOver

Userscripts.org: GreaseMonkey script that reveals what's behind those asterisks when the mouse is over the password field.

Unhide Passwords

Firefox Extensions - Unhide Passwords: "Nobody standing behind you, peeking over your shoulder?
Then why struggle with hidden password fields?
Tired of typos, forgotten CapsLocks, or just trying to figure out what the original password was?
Turn those password fields into regular text fields, and forget about those hassles."

USB Drives - Know 'em, Love 'em, Keep 'em close

Update: Sept 30 2005 - Staples had a one-day sale. Offerings included the 1-Gig SanDisk Cruzer Micro for $39.99 - no messy rebates. I've noticed, however, that the Titanium transfers files much faster.
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I recently (posted Jan 2005) picked up a great deal... Staples had the SanDisk 512MB Micro on sale for $29.xx (after rebate) and I noticed in a posting on FatWallet that when the Micro was gone, Staples was substituting the 512MB Titanium. The Titanium is normally in the $80 neighborhood, so at ~$30 plus tax this was too good to pass up. I called the nearest Staples and asked if they had any 512MB Micro's on hand and heard "No, but we're substituting the Titanium for it". Needless to say, I rushed right over...
I gotta say, this is one sweet piece of geek hardware. The USB connector extends and retracts from the case like little data landing-gear. Transferring files seems much faster (15MB/sec read and 13MB/sec write) than with the SanDisk 256MB Mini that I've been carrying for the last year-plus.
This calls for a quick review of USB flash drives that I've owned:

• Dell 16MB - USB 1.1
• Gateway 32MB - USB 1.1
• Lexar JumpDrive Secure 128MB
  
• SanDisk Cruzer Mini 256MB
  
• SanDisk Titanium 512MB - specs
• SanDisk Cruzer Micro 1GB
  

I already know that I'll be looking for a 1 or 2GB (maybe bigger) drive between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2005.

So what does a guy do with all that space? First, you add all your favorite applications. Then whatever data you can't live without. If you're a geek like me, getting constant helpdesk requests, you add Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and other diagnostic tools.