Reality

2008-05-22T00:33:00.001-01:00

Television in the UK is now only for the people to stupid to use a computer.

Geek Porn (USB style)

2008-05-14T16:57:00.008-01:00

My USB thumb drive is cool. i just recently encrypted the whole thing (well 3.50GB of the 4.00GB), i had it unencrypted for a long time and i didn't install a few plugins in Portable Firefox because of this, if i had lost the drive, the finder would have had access to all me passwords (including this blogs password) as i am quite lazy and let Firefox remember all my passwords. Pidgin stores it's password file in plain text so the finder would also have had all my IM passwords, not good.

Desktop to begin with.

The USB drive is U3 which means it pretends to be a CD when plunged in so it can autorun. i have set it to autorun a *.cmd file (XP *.bat file) so it can run a few commands. When you plug in a U3 drive there is actually two drives. the CD drive and the data drive, i installed SmithTech App Launcher (ISO for U3 drives) on the "CD" drive and set it to run "Gear/jGo.cmd" on the data drive.

This is jGo.cmd:

@echo off

TrueCrypt /v v /l v /m rm /a /q
CMD /c V:\Gear\vRUN.cmd

exit

As you can see this runs truecrypt (in traveler mode) to mount an encrypted file called v as drive V:\ (i chose V:\ as i heard some people change all their CD drives to something like X,Y or Z so no matter how many HDs/USB keys they attach to their PC their CD letters never get messed up, V:\ seemed like a drive letter no one would choose).

jGo.cmd running truecrypt which is asking for the password.

Once the volume is mounted the next command runs another *.cmd file (vRUN.cmd) on the V:\ drive.

This is vRUN.cmd:

@echo off

rem start /wait /d "Gear\backup" bakup.exe
start StartPortableApps.exe
start /d "Gear\RK" RKLauncher.exe

exit

As you see this just runs StartPortableApps.exe (XrX Portable Apps Menu Mod) and RKLauncher.exe, (backup.exe is remarked out, more on what that is later). i could put a lot more commands in there if i wanted. That is the good thing with running a *.cmd file as opposed to running a program (*.exe), lots of commands.

XrX Portable Apps Menu Mod running (it changes the XP wallpaper, cool) with the very nice Moonito 01 theme by jorgito.

Also runs a nice little OSX like menu thing called RK Launcher which is simple and handles relative paths nicely.

Programs used:
SmithTech App Launcher (ISO for U3 drives)
TrueCrypt
XrX Portable Apps Menu Mod
RK Launcher

Useful site for apps:
PortableApps.com
the Portable Freeware collection
PortableApps Theme Central
my U3 del.icio.us tag (:

The bakup.exe program that doesn't run in vRUN.cmd is interesting, is is basically a bat file that runs a few programs to swipe Windows/IM/network passwords from the PC you plugged the USB key into, and copies them to a text file, it even copies the IE/Firefox history. It is based on the USB Switchblade from the podcast Hak5. It is a *.exe file because there is also a shortcut to it on the PortableApps Menu, one problem i found with the PA menu is it's can't run cmd/bat files so a quick google search found Bat_To_Exe_Converter.exe, name says it all.

To unmount the V:\ drive i made a unmount.cmd:

@echo off

TrueCrypt /d V /q

exit

Once unmounted all that is left is a 3.50GB encrypted file called v, with all me stuff safe inside it. Of course this file is backed up on my desktop PC so if i ever did lose the key i just get a new one and copy it onto that.

Stay safe (and secret) ^_~

Different language site translations

2008-05-13T23:58:00.002-01:00

Here is a little tip i just made for getting a translation of a website you can not understand. On this google page you can drag the "1-click translations" buttons from the page to your "Bookmarks Toolbar" to get google to translate a page in just one click.

i just right-clicked on the toolbar and made a new folder, called it "trans" and dragged all the "*** to English" buttons into it. Now any site i get to i don't understand i can just click the trans folder and get a pulldown of all the languages, click the one the page is written in and google translates it, sweet (:

XP, SP3, Visual Styles, uxtheme.dll

2008-05-08T18:18:00.004-01:00

Installed SP3, a bit to much backing up for my liking. After using XP for more that five minutes i think anyone with the least intelligence realizes that having the XP disk is important and alway backing-up (preferably on a external disk) everything as they are going to need to reinstall XP every few months. Everything went OK except my theme was well messed up, bugga. After trying a few things i realised SP3 replaced my patched uxtheme.dll (uxtheme.dll by default prevents users from installing themes that are not digitally signed by Microsoft). Quick Google search found Windows XP SP3 Patched UxTheme.dll [6.0.2900.5512], downloaded, patched and everything is fine.

P.S., The theme i use is the very elegant GSM VS.

does it really matter

Reality

Geek Porn (USB style)

Different language site translations

XP, SP3, Visual Styles, uxtheme.dll