LicenseCrawler

By Brian

Posted on December 30th, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads | 3 Comments »

Whenever you reinstall an operating system, you always get into the problem of finding those old serial numbers for software installs. It’s the Magical Jelly Bean, but for all apps, not just Microsoft apps.
It will pretty much grab anything that is semi-easily found in the registry. I think it’s a nice app that lets you reinstall with just a little bit less pain.
Check out licensecrawler, from Klinzmann
Klinzmann also seems to be working on remote application starting as well as a system crawler for backuping and recovery.

BlueScreenView

By Brian

Posted on December 28th, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Tech News | 2 Comments »

For those of us who slave for the computer illiterate 😉 by fixing their broken computers, here is something which is quite useful.
If you can boot into windows and are able to run .exes, bluescreenview will be able to let you read all the blue screens you want. With the error codes there and not disappearing after about 2 seconds.
It also tells you what files or drivers caused the crash which is exceedingly useful when the knee jerk reaction of googling the 0x0 code fails miserably.

Overall, its a small, portable app which can often help you diagnose those pesky bsods unless its a boot problem.

Check BlueScreenView out and see if its worth keeping in that usb key.

WEP Cracking

By Brian

Posted on November 22nd, 2009 in Downloads, Dumb Things That Happen, Linux, PSA-Types, Things we should do more of | Comments Off on WEP Cracking

So, in the interest of those of us who are poor college students and cannot afford good interwebs, or those of us who just moved into a new apartment and can’t get that internet up in time….
Here are the moderately idiot proof ways of cracking the WEP encrypted network of your neighbors, whom you should bake cookies for and give to them for their kind supplying of internets.
SpoonWep in BackTrack3. Boot into Backtrack 3, KDE Menu>Backtrack>Radio Network>Analysis>80211>cracking>SpoonWep
You need the channel and the BSSID which you can get from BackTrack>Radio Network Analysis>80211>Analyser>Kismet

What this pretty much means…DON’T USE WEP to encrypt your wifi! It keeps no one out, and its pretty much a useless and empty gesture.
Cheers and remember those cookies!

Preview of Sketch2Photo

By Brian

Posted on November 16th, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads, Labs/Experiments, Photos/Videoes, Picture of the Day, Science!, Tech News | 1 Comment »

So, this is a preview of a piece of software which I find to be absolutely ridiculous.
I had not thought that anyone had actually been able to program an algorithm to do this as well as this.
Here, we have a program which allows you to do very rough sketches of an image, say a beach with some birds, sailboats, and a newly wed couple kissing. Very rough sketch.
Well, this program takes your rough sketch and keywords for each object and runs them through image searches online and *builds a composite image of it.* In other words, it outputs a “photoshopped” image composite of what you had sketched.
All fine and good, it sounds relatively meh on paper. However take a look at these images and you will be astounded at how real the final picture seems, especially when compared to what it was extracted from.

Check out their university research page which has more ridiculous images made by Sketch2Photo, as well as the source code of the program itself!

SheepDog

By Brian

Posted on November 10th, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads, Dumb Things That Happen | Comments Off on SheepDog

Due to the large number of presentations I’ve had to do these past few months, I’ve run into this problem a few times. You do your presentation, you’re all done, then you unplug your monitor and powerpoint is…stuck in the imaginary monitor. One might ask…why the hell would it happen?
I can offer….no reason. In any case, Sheepdog is a shepherd that will push these lost windows back onto your screen. Either through a hotkey or the system tray, you can have it shepherd any windows. It’s 20 kb and free….nifty?
It’s usually pretty painful to get the window back yourself, either reattaching the computer and moving it back, or changing internal settings, etc. In any case, I feel like SheepDog is a nifty little program to keep in your flash drive for that occasaion.

Hiren’s BootCD

By Brian

Posted on November 3rd, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads | 1 Comment »

I found this extremely nifty bootcd that people who screw around or fix computers should have. “Hiren” apparently made this wonderful bootcd which includes a huge collection of utilities. In broad categories, it has partition tools, backup tools, recovery tools, benchmarking/harddrive/ram test tools, MBR editing, Bios saving/cracking, password changers, network tools and disk optimizers.
Amazingly…its 186 mb!
My suggestion would be to simply download it, and burn it to a cd. Then…just wait until you need any of those tools to fix or tweak your system. I would say that Hiren’s BootCD is a nifty tool 🙂

Repost: Synergy

By Brian

Posted on November 2nd, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads, For Macs, Linux, Software/Hardware Reviews | 6 Comments »

Perhaps I’m just trying to get back into things…but lets start off the supposed revival of flashladybug with a repost.
I only recently, and I mean *recently* discovered the true usefulness of Synergy.
I posted this waaaay back in December, ’08. Reaaaly long time ago.
In any case, I tried this up on my desktop and laptop, stuck them side-by-side. My current setup is Left Panel, Center Panel, Laptop Display.
With synergy, I essentially have a 3 panel desk! The only thing that is missing is that I cannot move windows between the desktop and laptop screen. They are working on that, and I gotta admit, if they succeeded in doing that somehow, this would be quite an app.

In anycase, brief summary: Lets you share the use of a mouse and keyboard across computers, regardless of platform/OS. Copy paste is retained between the machines, and it works with almost no lag on a wifi network.

Synergy could be the easy way of adding productivity without having to shell out for a new video card and monitor 😛

Sweet Dreams…

By Brian

Posted on April 26th, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads, PSA-Types, Sleep/Naptime!, Software/Hardware Reviews, Tech News, Things we should do more of | 1 Comment »

If you live with several people or in close proximity, such as dorms, apartments, etc, you generally will encounter at some point in time the problem of someone being loud when your trying to go to sleep. It could be intentional, but most of the time, its completely unintentional and could probably be easily fixed by popping out and asking nicely. However, if its not, or if you just don’t feel like it, Sweet Dreams can gradually lower your system volume based on a schedule.
What does this mean?
Your trying to go to sleep, set Sweet Dreams to decrease the volume on your computer over the course of 30 minutes, stopping at the final volume of 5%, and tell it to shutdown afterwards. Well…that’s exactly what it will do.
It does it quite gradually, and I really did fall asleep without even noticing that it had gotten so quiet. Very useful if you have some music you can fall asleep to, but don’t feel like having to turn it off or listening to it all night.
Check it out: Sweet Dreams

GifTag

By Brian

Posted on April 25th, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Tech News, Things we should do more of | Comments Off on GifTag

GifTag is a universal wishlist. Pick stuff you want,  add them to your list, share em with friends/family, and voila, they all have access to a wishlist that can contain items from any webpage.
It’s a pretty nifty app which could get very useful for those parties where you get lots of gifts. *Hint Hint.

Check it out: GifTag
Did I mention it was free?

GeeMail

By Brian

Posted on April 23rd, 2009 in Computer software/hardware, Downloads, Google, Tech News | Comments Off on GeeMail

GeeMail is a desktop client for Gmail. You know how Gmail now allows offline support? GeeMail lets you do it from your desktop, without the browser. No configuration except logging in, offline support, cross platform. It is a free Adobe Air app.
Check it out, it works pretty well, and its nice to have a separate app instead of always having a firefox or chrome window open. GeeMail