The live cds you cannot live without : Gparted and Clonezilla.
May 26Partitioning your harddrive when you have some data on it, is like doing brain surgery on your own best friend .. with blunt scissors, blindfolded, hanging upside down .. in the subwaycar .. while playing pingpong .. well , you catch my drift. With your precious data on the drives, having to resize, move and add partitions is pretty dangerous. Of course you backed up all your data ( you ARE a ‘Wiseguy’ are you not ?) but still. A great tool that has always helped me in these precarious times is Gparted. Back in the days I had a “Copy” of Partition Magic (from Symantec) to do this. But that was because I was oblivious from the fact that Gparted existed. This free live cd (which is also a Linux app) helps you repartition any system without having to boot into the os. Get your copy here.
The other classic I remember was Symantecs Ghost !. When I had freshly installed a system I would make an image using Ghost for quick reinstalls should it be required. I even remembering re-imaging entire classrooms with Ghost, multicasting the data over the network. When I showed my skills to my colleagues at the time they thought it to be black magic ! A free (and much more powerful) “clone” of Ghost (no pun intended) is Clonezilla. A free and open source solution to do JUST that and more. Their website might make Geocities blush but, Get your copy here.
I have copies of these two disks lying around in my car and on a Usb stick along with some other essentials. Whenever you come across this one friend that needs brain surgery .. you will be happy you have them.
To help you along, Ive found some great tutorials on Youtube. The Gparted tutorial is a little dated but very well explained.
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Kwtv303 : "Twittering from the command line".
May 25
We show you a very simple tool how to use twitter from the command line, teach you how to schedule your tweets with Cron and create your own personal twitter assistant. With some cool and smart hacks for anyone to master we create your own virtual twitter butler (or imaginary friend)
Shownotes.
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The leap. One small step for Hand. One giant Leap for Handkind.
May 25There are moments in your life where you stop whatever you are doing and think : ” I saw this in a scifi Movie once ! “. The great thing about living in our day and age is that technology is evolving so fast, fiction becomes fact in the average lifespan of a teen boysband. In my life i’ve had several of these moments. My first cellphone ( Beam me up Scotty ) My iPad ( Previously laying around on Picards Desk ) and my Microsoft Kinect, which strangely reminded me from that awesome scene from Minority report. When it comes to the evolution of interacting with machines this very scene was a visionary moment in what things to come would (and wanted) to look like. Swiping and gestures on tablets, playing games with the Kinect … somehow we all started to feel like Tom Cruise … only .. about a feet taller.
If the “Leap” is what it is promising to be .. that very scene in Minority report is becoming the 8 bit prototype of what the “Leap” can do. A way to visually interact with your computer using your hands, fingers and even a pin. Accurate to the point where you can sign documents in the air, responsive enough to use in a first person shooter. I’m not sure about you, but the atrophied muscles in my arms are going to have a serious workout if I will need to swing them around this much. I’ll better hit the gym before this invention hits the store next winter.
Oh , by the way : At a target price of 70 dollars .. you can even procrastinate saving up for it before pre-ordering it on their website.
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Classic : Old Commodore 64 add brings back memories for old guys.
May 24Long time friend of the show Swift has taken up a very interesting hobby over the last few years collecting retro gaming consoles. What started out as a collection of fantastic 8 and 16 bit Nintendo and Sega consoles has gradually evolved into an ever expanding mini museum of old computer hardware. His recent addition , a Commodore 64 , in mint condition with original packaging, printer, data recorder and everything prompted me to go and google up this great commercial from back in the day. If you never had a Commodore 64 it will just be a quant little flick. If you HAVE had one, its pure sweet retro …
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How about rolling your own Cyanogen mod distro for your Android phone.
May 23I once talked to a wiseguy (Knightwise.com fan who shall remain nameless, we will never tell ANYONE he is called Konrad) who told me he had one thrown his Android smartphone at a door. He actually threw it IN the door. Making not a dent, but a HOLE in the door. Because I love doors ( I really do ) I thought it would be a good idea to share the following tool with you. Because lets face it. If you don’t like the obese clusted of bloatware your phone brand or provider smeared on top of Android, you can always root it and install Cyanogenmod.
But what if there is no Cyanogenmod for your phone ? Or what if you have a big 2.3 fetish and the doctor said Ice Cream Sandwich is no good for you ? Why not “Roll your own” Cyanogenmod. You can do so with this cool little Linux tool that lets you “cook your own phone DNA” on your favorite version of Linux. Read up on the entire howto and the right pointers to the right places .. here
