stuart test blog

Most large organisations employ dedicated packagers to create automated software installations that can be deployed enterprise-wide using distribution tools such as Microsoft’s SMS 2003 or Group Policies. Smaller companies, however, can’t afford to package applications and often revert to manually installing the software on computers as required. Adobe provides a useful utility to help administrators customise […]

The Disk Cleanup tool can be incredibly useful but is often underutilised. Here are some tips I’ve picked up that can help you utilise the tool to its fullest. Launch the tool quickly by opening the Run command (Start -> Run or Win Key + R) and type: “cleanmgr” (without quotes) To configure the settings […]

[tags]sysinternals,microsoft,tools,utilities,downloads[/tags] A utility that I’ve just recently started to use a lot is the Contig tool from Sysinternals. What it does is check one or more files for fragmentation and then attempts to move the file to an area on your hard drive where the whole file can live contiguously (is that really a word?) […]

Microsoft have just released a new tool under the Sysinternals banner called Active Directory Explorer. Read the blurb from the website below for more information but based on this description, it sounds amazing! It’s odd then, that there is no other information about this new tool apart from the quote below. This seems like a […]

[tags]security,passwords,hacking,cracking,microsoft,complex,best-practices[/tags] As a follow-up to the secure USB drive post, I wanted to give some pointers on how to create secure, complex passwords. Complexity… In a Microsoft environment, a complex password must be at least six characters long, cannot contain three or more letters from the user’s username, and must contain characters from at least […]

[tags]mediatemple,blogs,downtime[/tags] Like Richard MacManus’s “Read/Write Web” blog, my site was down tonight for a couple of hours. Quite frustrating as I was inspired to write some better blog posts after creating my first Facebook group – “Wellington Bloggers”. Here’s the MediaTemple response.  Richard’s disappointing write-up: Grid Server Crushes Shared Hosting? Not Tonight It Didn’t…

A quick step-by-step tutorial on how I secure my 4GB USB drive: Create the file… Download TrueCrypt from here: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php Unzip the download, but don’t install it. Browse to the “Setup Files” directory. Run “TrueCrypt.exe” and click the “Create Volume” button to start the wizard. Choose the “Create a standard TrueCrypt volume” option. Click the “Select […]

[tags]wordpress,plugins,comment,notification,alerts[/tags] Don’t you hate it when you post a comment on a blog and then have to keep checking back to see if someone has replied to your comment. Well if you post a comment on this blog you can choose to receive an email notification when a new comment is made on the same entry. […]

[tags]skype,voip,phones,internet,telephony[/tags] I’ve been meaning to sign up with the Skype-in service for a while now. Skype-in is a landline phone number that transfers to my Skype account when called. The cool thing about a Skype-in number is that you can get it in one of 18 countries around the world. This is useful for me as I […]

I saw this on MiramarMike’s blog and the on Jim Donovan’s En Avant blog. Take the test at Mingle2 to see how geeky you are! 69% Geek